Made to be Broken
by CharlotteBlackwood
Summary: When Chloe Lessing joins NCIS, looking to leave her past behind her, she eagerly embraces friends - old and new - and devotes herself to living by Gibbs's famous rules. But it's true, what they say, that some rules are made to be broken. LJG/OC
1. Making Acquaintance

In a small holding area for a bigger office, Chloe Lessing waited, trying not to watch the secretary as she worked. The two women were both petite, both brunette. The secretary's hair was closer to espresso, and Chloe's was a chestnut shade, long enough to tickle her shoulders. That was the first thing her parents did when she came back from England, after taking her to a doctor and a psychologist: they made her get her hair cut. Now, the tickle of the strands on her neck and collarbone reminded her of decisions she should regret, complicated choices that still haunted her.

The secretary told Chloe that the Director would see her now, and Chloe nodded, going through to the office she'd been staring at, feeling her hands being to sweat.

Her mother had told her over and over that it was time to get back to work, to find something to occupy her time now that the therapist had cleared her. Chloe didn't feel completely ready, but when her best friend told her there was an opening at NCIS, one where she could work with her two closest, oldest friends, Chloe had filled out an application. She hadn't really expected to be given an interview, but here she was.

Director Tom Morrow stood, shook her hand, greeted her warmly. He was a kindly man, older, but with an assured posture and firm handshake. She brushed a strand of her chestnut hair out of her face as she shook he gestured for her to sit. Chloe knew he was acquainted with her mother, and she hoped she'd not been given an interview on that alone.

"Does the Director usually conduct the interviews?" she asked, sitting across from him at a small table.

"For this position, yes," he said, pressing his hand to the table. "First ever External Liaison. You understand the need for such a position, of course."

Chloe nodded. After 9-11, pressure was on the different levels of alphabet soup to get along, not that their long histories of isolationism made it any easier. She had seen how…difficult that could be, firsthand.

"You are uniquely qualified," he continued, setting down his pen. "Your family notwithstanding, you've worked in another agency, worked in conjunction of several agencies, and you have a wealth of contacts across the board. And you come highly recommended from my Internal Liaison, and you and Nate will have to work together quite a bit."

Chloe licked her lips and felt the back of her neck burn. She could work with Nathan Wells just fine, but she hoped their former relationship didn't become office gossip.

"I'd be prepared to sign you on right here and now," he said, still smiling, "but what I want from you is assurance that what you're signing up for is something you're willing and able to do."

She picked up the description that he pushed toward her, the precursor to the contract she would sign. The job was largely a desk job, although when necessary she would be expected to partake of crime scenes, interviews, and arrests as needed. The one thing that made her hesitate, however….

"A stipulation," she said softly. "No deep cover jobs."

His eyes softened, almost to pity, and she knew he knew. How much he knew was another story, but he knew enough about her time in England to understand her hesitation, and yet he was still hiring her.

"Of course," he said. "You are…."

"I'm fine," she said, not exactly lying. "I am, but I…need to know it's not going to be like that again. Quick cover ops is one thing, but deep cover is…"

He nodded, and pulled out the paperwork on the spot for her to sign. Chloe let out a sigh of relief, couched in a small laugh, and she took the pen he held her, signing the paperwork. She asked when he wanted her to start, and he said she could get acquainted with the job right away, if it suited her.

He walked her out of his office, up a corridor to where two desks inhabited an office. One was clearly hers – devoid of character or paperwork – and the other must be Nathan's, with a large stack of files in the inbox and a few photographs. She picked one up and was startled to see that it was one they'd taken at Princeton, with his arm around her, kissing her cheek as she smiled at the camera. She quickly replaced the frame and put her purse in the desk, ready for a tour of the building.

They were about to go out again when someone burst into the room, a stern-looking, gray-haired man with piercing blue eyes and a frown. He looked at Chloe for a moment with mild recognition. His eyes darted to the desk and back to her, questioning.

"Gibbs, meet our new External Liaison," the Director said, still grinning. "Chloe Lessing, Probationary Agent. Chloe, this is Agent Gibbs."

She held out her hand and he looked at it for a moment before finally taking it and shaking it. His hand was warm and his grip was firm. Workman's hands, she thought, feeling the roughness of callouses. When he pulled his hand away, her palm felt cold.

"Have you seen Wells?" Gibbs asked, still looking at her, but clearly addressing the Director.

"Not since the parking lot this morning. Need him?"

"Need his signature."

"Leave it on his desk. If I see him, I'll let him know. Unless it's urgent?"

"By the end of the day," Gibbs said, setting a file folder down on Nathan's desk. He left the room without another word, and Chloe cleared her throat, following the Director out of the corridor, down to the staircase.

Once they were in an elevator down to the basement, Chloe said, "Agent Gibbs is very…abrupt."

"It's his way," the Director said, smiling. "Gibbs is brilliant, but he takes some getting used to. There's no one better."

The elevator doors opened, and he led the way to autopsy, where an elderly man was taking off his gloves and setting them in the trash can.

"Doctor Mallard," the Director said, still smiling. The man looked up, his glasses resting on his nose in a very professorly way. "This is Chloe Lessing, our new External Liaison."

"Ah, yes," the man said, smiling, so kindly and warm compared with Agent Gibbs. "A pleasure. Abby mentioned that you were coming in for an interview today. I take it the interview was successful."

"Yes, thank you," she said, shaking his hand and glancing at the body on the table before looking back to him. "I look forward to working with you."

"And I with you," she said smiling, "although…"

She gestured to the body on the table and he nodded knowingly, looking down at the poor soul he'd just autopsied.

"It's never pleasant with bodies involved, true," he said. "Well, Gerald is helping Nathan in the evidence garage, so I'm afraid you've met all there is to meet here. I'm sure Abby will be happy to see you."

Chloe thanked him and followed the director out. He led her back into the elevator and said, "Just so you know, Doctor Mallard talks to bodies."

"There are stranger things," she said with a fond smile. In truth, she was only half-listening, as the elevator sounded their arrival and the doors opened. They walked into the only readily available room, although she could see a corridor that led down to a garage. Chloe knew which office had to be Abby's anyway, from the persistent and high-volume music emanating from the room in question. Abby and Chloe never shared a taste in music, but they respected each other's selections.

She crept into the room, seeing Abby from the back in shorts, a lab coat, pigtails, and a white dog collar. Chloe wrapped her arms around the waist of her much-taller friend, who squealed with delight, whipping around to join the hug.

"You're here!" Abby cried, squeezing Chloe's frame enthusiastically. "Hello, director. Chloe, you're here!"

"I've hired her," Director Morrow said, smiling as Chloe pulled back from the hug.

"You've got new tattoos," Chloe said, gesturing to the spider webs on the back of Abby's neck. "I like them."

"We have to get lunch," Abby said, excitedly. "You, me, Nate. You're right, by the way, he's super cool, very cute, like a puppy. He and I were already going to get Chinese. You have to come with."

Chloe agreed, but she couldn't stop thinking about the photograph Nathan had on his desk. What did it mean for him to display it like that, after all these years?

/-/

Leroy Jethro Gibbs did not see himself as a complicated man. He had simple goals, simple rules, simple expectations. One of those expectations was that he be informed in changes in his team – ideally that he could choose that team himself, and he caught Tom on the way to his car for lunch.

"I thought I was picking my team," he said to the Director.

"You are," Tom said, pulling his keys out of his pocket. "You just let me know when you're ready to fill those empty desks."

"That's not what I'm talking about," Gibbs said, stepping on front of Tom to keep him from walking to his car and driving away. "That Lessing woman. You hired her?"

"Today, yes," Tom said, his lips twitching with amusement. "She's not your team, Jethro, she's mine."

"I have to work with her."

"If your concern is that she's got the job because of her family—"

"Rule 12," Gibbs said, knowing that Tom knew his rules well enough to know this one. "You tell me that's not going to be a problem for her."

Tom hesitated, glancing back at the building for a moment before he leaned in and said, "Look, Jethro, if she dated a co-worker, it would be my business anyway. There's no NCIS policy against it, and I don't have a personal policy against it. From what Nate told me, they dated for a while at Princeton. She's dated since. And trust me, Jethro, she's not interested in relationships right now."

"And you know this because…?"

"Because of how she left the FBI."

Gibbs knew little about the circumstances of the incident, the particulars that had caused her to leave the agency. He did recall seeing the name Lessing, a federal agent, being held captive by terrorists. He could fill in the dots, he could ask Abby, or he could just confront Chloe Lessing about the matter. Depending on what actually happened, he might have to handle the matter with sensitivity beyond just confronting her.

"She's going to be here," Tom said, his expression saying plainly that he considered the matter closed. "Learn to work with her. I'm not asking you to like her."

/-/

Gibbs stepped into the elevator that afternoon with Chloe Lessing, and he didn't respond to her friendly, slightly-nervous greeting. Instead, he let the elevator go for a moment before he pressed the button to stop it, freezing them in mostly-darkness. It startled her, but she handled it with grace, which suggested she was used to dealing with surprises.

"Why did you leave the Bureau?" he asked, deciding to take advantage of the circumstances and be blunt.

The question didn't faze her, either, and she stared up at him. He realized how petite she was, and he wondered if it ever made it hard for her to do her job, if she couldn't be intimidating. But then, she was an attractive woman. Many men would be drawn in easily by that.

"They couldn't…promise me the terms I needed," she said.

"Which is?"

"No deep cover."

She'd been kidnaped while under deep cover, Gibbs knew. Something must have gone wrong, her identity must have been discovered, and an IRA cell held her captive for months before MI-6 and the CIA rescued her.

"How did FBI have an op in England?"

"They didn't," she said, looking slightly nauseous. "I was on non-negotiable loan to the CIA, liaised to MI-6. They scanned all agencies in three countries to find a match for the profile they needed, and they picked me. I didn't have a lot of options. But the Director kindly gave me a stipulation where I am not eligible for deep cover missions. So, it can't happen again."

Gibbs looked at her face, considering with a frown. She was small, but he wouldn't have thought her fragile. She seemed strong, not brittle. He might have picked her for a deep cover assignment as well, with an attractive but not exotic face, a frame small enough to be nonthreatening, and an ability to carry on conversation despite having the weaker hand.

"I know you dated Wells."

She smiled, humorlessly, and said, "A long time ago, Agent Gibbs. For about a year. It was never very serious. I dated his brother, after, with Nate's blessing. Rest assured, there will be no inappropriate workplace behavior. I just want to do my job, do something…meaningful."

He nodded, still not sure what to make of her. Then he thought of a good test, without having a more thorough one ready.

"If I put a paper in front of you and told you to sign before reading, that it was important, would you do it?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation, and his eyes narrowed again. Was she naïve? Was that why she'd been kidnapped?

"Why?"

"Because," she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Abby trusts you."

She pressed the button to start the elevator again, clearly convinced that this was all there was to say on the matter, and Gibbs had to agree.

Abby trusted Chloe Lessing, as well. They were best friends. So for the moment, he supposed he could trust her, too.

/-/

Chloe smiled at the knock on her door and she rushed to let in Nate to her apartment. He'd brought wine, and she didn't have the heart to tell him she didn't drink it anymore, so she gestured for him to put it on the counter, made a quick excuse why she didn't feel like drinking any now, and she invited him to join her over leftover pizza. They sat on her sofa and each grabbed a slice of cold pizza from the box – pepperoni and onion – and she relaxed as he put an arm around her waist letting her rest her head on his shoulder.

Nate was much taller than her, so that resting her head on his shoulder was more resting it on his upper arm. But his arms were strong for how thin they were, and he exuded a great deal of warmth. She knew his hair was soft as it was light, but she didn't raise a hand to touch it. She still wasn't sure why he kept that picture on his desk, and she didn't want to prove Agent Gibbs right and be a problem before she even began her job.

"It's good to share an office with you," he said, brightly. "It'll improve the look of the place."

"Yeah," she said. He took a bite of pizza and she tried to think of a reason why he would have a picture of her besides what might be the obvious. "I don't think Agent Gibbs likes me."

Nathan laughed and squeezed slightly.

"Gibbs doesn't take to people easily, Chloe. You earn his trust, but you will. I've never known anyone who managed to sweettalk as many people as you. Got the world eating out of your hand even as you walk all over them."

"You make me sound like a bitch."

"No," he said, smiling. "You're easily the sweetest person I've ever known. Except…except maybe Abby. She's unnatural."

Chloe laughed, knowing that Nathan and Abby had developed a keen respect for each other, so that he meant it in the best way possible.

"Our place was always open," she said. "I mean, honestly, who would try to rob us? Everybody loved us, and even if they didn't, Abby could track anybody. And everybody knew it."

He laughed again and said, "How did you even end up going to Louisiana for college, anyway?"

"We'd lived down there before," she said, frowning. "We went where my mom was posted. And I wanted to go away from where she was posted for a while, be somewhere that felt like home without parents looking over my shoulder. Plus, all my cousins were posted far, far away. It was like…a place that was my own."

"I'm just glad you came to Princeton, then," he said, leaning in closer. "And I'm glad you came to NCIS."

"Me too," she said, leaning back slightly. She frowned up at him. "Nate, we…we aren't a thing, are we?"

"What?" he said, laughing. "Chloe, we haven't dated in years. Why would you even ask a thing like that." She shrugged and he sighed. "Gibbs start spouting off about Rule 12, didn't he? Shouldn't have kept that picture on my desk. He notices and remembers everything. Good investigator. Look, Chloe, we're not a thing. And even if we were, he's not our boss. We're not subject to his rules."

She leaned back and frowned, picking a slice of pepperoni off her pizza and eating it slowly.

"That's not the point," Chloe said. "First rule to working with anybody, Nate, is you meet their expectations, always. This Gibbs isn't my boss, but he's my co-worker, and hopefully for a long time. You say that's rule number twelve. Start telling me the others. I'll meet them all."

"Well," he said, grinning, "number one is never screw over your partner. I…never remember number two. You ought to ask Tony about that one."

"Tony?"

"DiNozzo. You'll meet him tomorrow. Three…. Never be unreachable. Four is basically keep secrets to yourself or only tell one other person you trust. Five, don't waste good. Six…. Never say you're sorry; it's a sign of weakness. Seven: always be specific when you lie. Eight: Never take anything for granted. Nine is never go anywhere without a knife. Ten is never get personally involved in a case. Eleven: when the job is done, walk away. You know twelve."

"How many of these are there?" she asked, feeling nervous as she tried to keep them all straight.

He frowned and said, "Um, they go into the high sixties. I don't know all of them by heart. The higher numbers don't come up that often. Let's see…. Thirteen, never, ever involve lawyers. Fourteen is bend the line, don't break it. Fifteen, always work as a team…."

She sighed, eating her pizza and listened to him reciting rules, trying to keep them straight and making a note to start carrying her knife again – a habit she'd gotten out of after coming back stateside. If she was going to impress Gibbs and earn his trust, she had to start now.

 **A/N: So, this is my first NCIS fan fiction, so take it easy on me. The next chapter is Yankee White, which is a couple of months after this chapter, but I wanted to give a bit of set-up on the characters and their interactions/relationships before throwing you in the deep end.**

 **Review Prompt: What do you think Chloe's NOT saying about her time in England?**

 **Q &A: Please ask questions. I will answer at least one question per here.**

 **Cheers**

 **-C**


	2. Yankee White

Gibbs paused his work on the boat in his basement to answer his phone, ignoring the television playing in the background.

"Yeah. Gibbs," he said, and Tony DiNozzo's voice answered.

"A Navy commander carrying the Football on Air Force One just carked in the air."

Gibbs glanced at his watch and thought through all the various agencies that would be fighting over that one. FBI, Secret Service.

"Where'd they land?"

"Wichita, Kansas. President's transferring to the backup bird. I booked us on a 15:00 United flight out of Reagan, stops in Dallas before going to Wichita."

"That the best you can do?"

"It's Saturday, Gibbs. Chloe could call in some favors, if you'd like. But if we had our own jet…."

"We don't," Gibbs said, mildly irritated. Agent Lessing's favors were not going to be spent on something like this. She'd not been around long enough to build up deep stores of favors, and he preferred to save them for back-to-the-wall moments. "Ducky's buds with coroners across the country. See if you can't get one of them to hold the body until we can get there."

"Alright."

"And DiNozzo, don't you tell Lessing about this."

"Boss?"

"She needs plausible deniability if we're going to swing this. She's a good liar, but the FBI knows her playbook."

"Understood, boss."

Gibbs hung the phone back up on his wall and passed the television before turning off the power. He heard the television go silent, and he told himself he was doing the right thing, keeping Chloe Lessing out of the loop on this one.

She was proving to be a good agent, he thought, closing his door and getting out his keys. A quality agent with the right connections to do her job well, and the right instincts to follow his lead on just about anything. But there were enough questions about her past unanswered that he wasn't confident in trusting her, not yet.

/-/

Chloe pulled a handful of peanuts out of a jar on her desk as she got a call. She sighed, having only just turned on her computer. She hated taking calls before she'd thoroughly scanned her email.

"Lessing," she said, answering the phone with her free hand.

"Chloe, this is Gerald," a deep voice answered, sounding puzzled. "I thought Nate would answer. Shouldn't you be headed to Kansas?"

"Kansas?" she said, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could free a hand. She pulled up her email and scanning it. "No, I'm here. Did you need something?"

"They've all left for the airport. The, uh, Navy guy who died on Air Force One?"

Chloe sighed, knowing what Gibbs must have done. A Navy man dying on that plane meant a long list of agencies getting involved, including the FBI. Was it because he didn't trust her? Or because he needed her here? Gibbs never did anything without a plan. She just had to roll with it until she knew what he expected of her, and why he didn't bring her along.

"What did you need, Gerald?"

"Ducky gave me a name, a guy to call to hold onto the body until he gets there. Hold up things, wait for NCIS. Can you call him for me? I just got a body from a local case, mid-level. Pacci needs me to start the autopsy."

"Sure, send me the details. I'll sort it out."

/-/

Gibbs stepped off the escalator with his coffee and bag, and Tony trailed behind with the rest of the luggage, saying, "FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, even NYPD have private jets."

He smiled and said, "At 36 cents a mile. You wanna drive?"

"It's humiliating," DiNozzo groaned.

They arrived at the security checkpoint and Gibbs set his bag on the conveyer belt. Tony put his on the floor as the Security Guard gave them a curious look. Judging by how green the man looked, Gibbs instantly wished he'd brought Chloe, who would have known exactly what to say. But, short term annoyances would have a better long-term payoff.

"We're LEOs," he said to the guard, who smiled ironically.

"Capricorn," he said.

Gibbs exchanged a look with Tony, who looked at the man with disgust, putting forward the paperwork for the weapons while Gibbs pulled out his badge to show.

"LEO, short for Law Enforcement Officer," Tony said, not impressed as the man took the paperwork to read.

"You new at this," Gibbs said, leaning in to look at the nametag, "Dennis?"

Dennis nodded weakly and said, "First week." Gibbs laughed as Dennis checked the badge. "NCIS…. Never heard of it."

Feeling his lips twitching, Gibbs leaned in and whispered to Tony, " _That's_ embarrassing."

"NCIS?" Dennis said again. "Anything like CSI?"

Tony said sarcastically, "Only if you're dyslexic."

"Okay," Dennis said, brushing off the comment admirably. "You can go ahead and go around the, uh, metal detector, but your bags have got to go through the scanner."

"Wait a minute," Gibbs said, frowning, "you're letting us take weapons aboard but you want to scan our bags?"

"Well, you've got permits for the weapons but you don't for the bags."

Tony rolled his eyes, but he began piling the bags onto the conveyor belt, and he muttered, "We really need our own jet."

Gibbs just let his lips twitch when on the other side of the security gate, Ducky called out, "Dennis! Those bags are mine."

"Oh!" Dennis said happily, smiling at Ducky. "Why didn't you tell me you were subbing for the Doc? You've got a bag permit."

Gibbs and Tony exchanged a glance as Ducky said, "Move it, men."

They started gathering up the bags and following him, allowing the role to sink in. Once they arrived, it would have to seem natural enough to fool any other law enforcement agencies present at the scene.

"We don't want to miss our flight," Ducky said with a smirk.

/-/

Chloe's whole body tensed when Director Morrow entered the office, raising an eyebrow holding up a memo. She forced her best smile and said, "What's that, sir?"

She was a good liar, overall, but she didn't try especially hard for this one, knowing he knew the truth already. She would save her lies for the hard sell.

"What do you know about DiNozzo taking off first thing this morning?" he said, narrowing his eyes.

"Nothing about it," she said with half-honesty. "Would that be why I haven't seen Gibbs today, perhaps?"

"Quite," he said, narrowing his eyes.

Chloe pursed her lips and held out her hand for the memo, letting her eyes scan information about a sudden death on Air Force One, down in Kansas, President moved to the backup and the body left for investigation.

"Well, I wouldn't worry too much about missing out on a piece of the pie, Director," she said, handing it back to him and turning back to her computer screen. "They can't start without their M.E."

He sighed and left the room, and she knew he would back her and Gibbs, when it came to it, whatever they had to answer for in the end. One never could tell with Gibbs.

/-/

"Uh, I don't give a damn which of you is boss," Gibbs heard a man on the airplane say as they stepped up to it. "You ain't moving this body until the M.E. says you can."

"You talking about me, Elmo?" Ducky said, obviously recognizing the voice of the man.

Gibbs barely glanced at the man named Elmo, but instead looked at the body, and glanced at the other people in the room, from a balding Fed to a very plucky brunette woman, probably Secret Service. He could tell by her posture that she was the one he wanted to deal with, if he had to choose. Simple enough, as the Bureau had been shooting themselves in the foot, lately, and she wouldn't want to do much with them, either.

"Ducky!" Elmo said, pleased and relieved. "How'd you like those steaks I air-expressed you?"

"Ah, delicious!"

The Fed and the woman spoke quietly about this, the Fed seemed suspicious. The woman was less moved, but Gibbs was silently pleased he'd made a point of not having Chloe Lessing around. The likelihood that this Fed knew her was something he wasn't prepared to risk.

Elmo pointed out the two onlookers and said, "Uh, Agent Fornell here is FBI. Agent Todd, Secret Service. Ducky, they've been fighting over this body like two hounds over a t-bone."

"Well, it's our t-bone for the moment," Ducky said darkly.

Gibbs cleared his throat and said, "All these LEOs are contaminating a potential crime scene."

Ducky nodded and said, "Oh, yes, my assistant's right. Everyone who boarded in Wichita will have to evacuate the plane."

"I'm not going anywhere," Fornell said sharply.

"I flew in on it," Agent Todd said with a stubbornness characteristic of a woman trying to make it in a world populated mainly by men.

Ducky waved his hand and said, "Very well, you two can stay. But everyone else must deplane."

Elmo took initiative, ushering others off, waving his arms and saying, "Alright, you heard the M.E., let's move it boys." Ducky knelt and Elmo said, "Ducky, what do you think?"

He did a once-over, typical of what he did for his examinations of bodies at any given scene.

"No outward sign of trauma," he said.

Todd nodded and said, "He was stricken after having lunch with the President."

In his off-hand way, Tony asked, "Yeah, how is the President?"

"He's fine. His physician cleared him to fly on to L.A."

"What happened?" Gibbs asked softly, knowing that the first step was to determine what he could from the witness who seemed to have been with the victim at the moment of the death – Agent Todd.

Both Fornell and Todd looked at Gibbs in mild confusion and interest, but he simple stared back at them, waiting for an answer to his question. He knew one of them would crack, sooner or later, and he was betting on Todd.

Soon enough, she did.

"When the Commander returned from lunch," she said, "he had an equilibrium problem and his grip was too weak to hold his briefcase."

Ducky, without looking up from the body, asked, "Did he gradually become ill, or was it sudden?"

"Sudden. He started to convulse and collapsed. The President's physician believed that the Commander had a stroke."

Tony, who was taking notes on the conversation said, perhaps a little too much like himself, "Kinda young for a brain fart."

In that moment, Gibbs wished he could slap Tony, but it would draw too much attention to them, and Ducky was just saying, "Looks like a natural death to me, Elmo. They can leave with the body, as long as they sign releases."

Fornell, irritated, said to Elmo, "Why the hell didn't you say that?"

"Couldn't," Elmo said with a shrug. "Like I said, it's the M.E.'s decision. Release forms are in my car."

Gibbs could have kissed Chloe and Gerald for fishing up this Elmo for them out of Ducky's contacts and making it work for them. He played along well.

"Let's go," Fornell said to Todd. "We can work out jurisdiction for Washington on the flight to Dallas."

Gibbs tried to look completely bland as Todd followed Fornell, glancing back at Gibbs before stepping off the top step, heading toward the car in question.

"Ah, Ducky…about those soft-shell crabs?"

Todd, who was obviously far cleverer than Gibbs would have liked, was glancing between Ducky and Elmo before following Fornell off the plane.

Ducky, who was conscious of Elmo saying too much, hesitated before saying, "Ah, you'll have them by the weekend."

"Ten-four, partner," Elmo said cheerfully, before following the two other agents off the plane.

Gibbs waited for Ducky to sigh with relief before he straightened up and turned to Tony.

"Tony, go hot," he said. "Show the pilot your credentials, get us the hell out of here." Tony started walking off, and Gibbs snapped at him, "Hey!" He pointed up. "Cockpit's on the top deck."

"I knew that," Tony lied.

Gibbs didn't bother fighting his smirk as Tony took the stairs to the cockpit. Instead, he knelt beside Ducky and asked, "Enjoy playing my boss?"

"I did, rather," Ducky said with a nod and a smile.

"What do you think happened, Duck?"

"Good God, Gibbs, I barely met the deceased."

"I think DiNozzo's right. Naval aviator, stroking at his age?"

"He could have bene born with an aneurysm," Ducky argued. "They're time-bombs in the body. I remember this young promising basso-perfundo in London. He was only 27 when he keeled over, in the middle of a Notaro aria—"

Before Ducky could finish his thought, Agent Todd stormed back onto the plane, her hand on her holstered gun.

"Who the hell are you people?" she demanded. "You're no M.E. assistant," she said to Gibbs, "and there's no soft-shell crab within a thousand miles."

"Sorry," Ducky muttered, and Gibbs pulled out his badge, now wishing once again that he'd brought Agent Lessing to smooth all this over while he worked.

"NCIS," he said. "We flew down here from Washington to take over the investigation."

She let her hand drop from her weapon, practically oozing with frustration.

"First the FBI tries to muscle in, and now NCIS."

"Yeah, well, I do believe this is a dead naval officer."

"Who died on Air Force One, after having lunch with the President it's _my_ job to protect."

Gibbs considered her before recalling something that Chloe Lessing said to him once at a crime scene where they had a particularly difficult time with some local LEOs – Sometimes, you should give them some of what they think they want.

"Okay, we can share jurisdiction," he said, although the words didn't feel as natural to him as they seemed to Chloe. "You can be on my team."

"Your team?" Todd said, again reminding him of a woman struggling to make it in a man's world. "Why should you head the investigation?"

"You ever worked a crime scene, Agent Todd?"

She stood a little straighter, tossing her brunette hair slightly, and said, "I'm a Secret Service agent."

He smirked in response and said, "I thought not."

Todd's face was indignant as she said, "Well, don't dismiss me like that! Okay, I _earned_ my jock strap."

"Yeah, does it ever give you that empty feeling?"

"What?" she asked.

"Your jock-strap."

A smile crept across her face, brightening with each word she delivered as she said, "No. Like some species of frogs, I grow what I need."

They shared a moment of enjoyment over the exchange, a moment where he decided that she must have brothers and that this was someone he could deal with after all before Tony clambered down the stairs to ruin it.

"Gibbs!" he said, speaking before thinking, again. "Pilot won't take off until the Secret Service chick gives us the…." He paused at the sight of Agent Todd. "Thumbs up."

She almost preened at this, looking at Gibbs with a face shining from satisfaction as she said, "I think that just made it my team."

And once again, like a never-ending pendulum, Gibbs was pleased not to have Chloe, who would have taken a chance to try to work out a compromise. Per her job description, but still a nuisance.

"No," he said. "It means we'll just have to hijack Air Force One. Tony, escort Agent Todd off this aircraft and close the hatch."

Todd stared at him, trying to work out whether he was bluffing.

"You're not serious," she said, almost a question. He started up the stairs to the cockpit. "Wait!" She chased after him. "Okay, okay! Your team, but only because I don't want to delay us further by having to shoot you."

Gibbs decided he liked her when she held out her hand, and Gibbs shook it. He nodded to Tony, who went over to the hatch to close it up so they could take off, with Agent Todd's approval. They heard the voice of Agent Fornell as the Fed was coming up the steps.

"Dammit, Agent Tood, let's get this show on the road!"

"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry," Tony said, sheepishly. "We, uh, overbooked the flight."

Gibbs waited only long enough to be certain Tony had the hatch closed before hurrying up the steps to the Comm to have a word with the Director and, almost certainly, Agent Lessing.

/-/

Chloe fielded a call from a very angry FBI director while the call came in from Gibbs and said she'd have to discuss the matter with her superior before cutting the phone call off and hurrying to MTAC. She could deal with the FBI later, but Gibbs was a much more difficult beast to wrangle.

"Did you have to literally slam the door in the FBI's face?" Director Morrow was asking Gibbs as she entered, and neither man made any sign of acknowledging her, although she knew both knew she was there.

"There were more of them than us," Gibbs answered.

"There's always more of them than us," the Director said sharply. "You didn't take Lessing, didn't even read her in before you left. You ever hear of interagency cooperation?"

Gibbs sat a little straighter and said, "Yes, sir. I got the Secret Service Agent-in-Charge at Wichita to agree to share the investigation."

Neither Chloe nor the Director bothered to hide their surprise as the Director asked, "Willingly?"

Gibbs's nose twitched slightly and he shrugged, but Chloe knew him well enough now to read that look.

"I'll take that as a request for backup at Andrews," she said, pulling out her phone, but when Gibbs nodded, Director Morrow sighed.

"Eh, that's what I thought," he said. "We're spread a bit thin, we've got no agents."

"If the FBI gets this body," Gibbs argued, "we won't see an autopsy report until after they leak it to the press."

"Then make sure they don't get it." Gibbs nodded. "Chloe can smooth a few things on this end. Will this Secret Service agent stand up to the FBI?"

"I don't know," Gibbs said, grinning. "She's got balls."

The two men laughed, and when the call ended, Chloe's shoulders tensed. She knew it was likely that Gibbs only hesitated to tell her to keep a measure of surprise, secrecy, and plausible deniability, but it still stung. She wasn't about to ask with the Director in the room.

"Priority one is that body," Director Morrow said as he glanced at his watch. "You can bet they'll keep hold of it, but the FBI is persuasive. You know they'll seduce the Secret Service into siding with them, over this agent's head or otherwise. Start smoothing things over, clear Gibbs's way, and mine. And I want everything you can get on the two agents."

"Who've we got?"

"Agent Todd from the Service," he said, and she scribbled down the name. "And Fornell at the Bureau."

Chloe's shoulder's tensed further, raising half an inch at the name. If the Director noticed, he said nothing. Likely, he already knew she knew Fornell, from the hiring process. There had to be a note in her file. She said she'd get right on it, but as soon as she returned to her office, she took a moment to find her breath.

Tobias Fornell was a good agent, not afraid to play dirty if he had to. A bit like Gibbs, in some ways. Nothing like him in others. When she made her desire to leave the FBI known, it was Fornell who went out of his way to attempt talking her around, convincing her to stay. He never had a chance at success, but it was flattering that he tried, and she felt a kind of fondness and loyalty for him.

How could she balance that with her growing loyalty to Gibbs? How was she going to find a way to stab one in the back to aid the other?

/-/

As soon as Gibbs returned to the crime scene, he knew there was a problem from the posture of Agent Todd.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"There's apparently a discrepancy between my time of death and the President's physician's," Ducky said.

"Log yours. Enough sketches, Tony. Agent Todd's gonna give you a floor plan."

"Oh, no, she won't," Agent Todd said defiantly. She followed him down an aisle, and Gibbs tried to focus on the task at hand through her fuming.

"What can you tell me about Commander Trapp?" he asked calmly.

"I can't give him Air Force One floor plans, they're top secret."

Gibbs grinned, shaking his head.

"Come on," he said, "I saw this in a Harrison Ford movie."

"Well, that's Hollywood speculation. You're asking for the real thing."

"Isn't the President's head down here someplace?"

"No."

"Now, this was in the movie!" he said, looking around the conference room he'd found, pointing to the chair at the head of the table. "Yeah! Harrison was sitting right here."

Agent Todd was not interested in films, though, and she said, "I can't risk those plans getting out on the Internet."

"NCIS does not leak," he said firmly. "These plans get out, you can shoot DiNozzo."

Completely unamused, she said, "No, I think I'm destined to shoot you."

This back and forth was getting the nowhere, and Gibbs wished he could clone Chloe so she could handle the big wigs and take care of soothing the egos of pests on the scene all at once.

"What about Commander Trapp?" he prompted, pushing her to something she'd be less inclined to fight him on."

"Only met him this morning. He just received his Yankee White clearance and was Major Kerry's backup. The major has the flu."

Gibbs continued up the plane and said, "We'll have to get a Navy doc to verify that."

"He's got it," Agent Todd said, waving her hands with the frustration that was so evident in her voice as she followed him. "But go ahead and waste a doctor's time double-checking like your…Ducky."

He found a cabinet and paused in front of it, looking at the keypad lock. An armory, if he had to guess.

"This is where the terrorists got their weapons in the movie," he said, playing with the keypad, just to see if the code from the film worked.

It didn't.

All he succeeded in was further aggravating Agent Todd, who said, "Oh, that is as ridiculous as the President's 'escape capsule.'"

He ignored the barb, continuing with business.

"Anybody switch planes with the President?"

"The President was put on a separate plane. Everyone else boarded the backup except three stewards, who were put in the press cabin."

She gestured to a curtained door, and he considered the door. He said, "What'd you keep them for?" He opened the door to wave at the stewards, who all looked very much shocked and bewildered, which wasn't a bad start. "Make coffee?"

Her anger and irritation reared up again and she said, "I may not know the finer points of investigation like sticking needles in liver or measuring swimsuit models, but I do know enough to hold the stewards who prepared and served the President's lunch."

She did seem to have a natural knack, despite lack of crime scene training, and Gibbs felt there was some promise for working with her.

"Hmm, okay," he said, turning away from the press cabin.

"You want to question—?"

"No," he said, "they're not going anywhere. We've got a crime scene to investigate. Rule number one, never let suspects stay together."

An old Mike Franks rule, but one that served a very good purpose, and one he enforced frequently. Few people could handle the art of skillfully putting suspects together – it was a natural gift – and he didn't like giving them a chance to build a story.

"Well, I didn't consider them suspects."

"Why'd you hold them?" He handed her a pair of gloves as she pondered his point. "Put these on."

"My fingerprints are all over this aircraft."

"Rule number two," he said, pulling out another Mike Franks rule, "always wear gloves to a crime scene."

He'd led them back to the crime scene, and Ducky was kneeling by the body, looking up as they approached.

"I believe I know why there's a discrepancy in the time of death," he announced, predictably eager to solve the puzzle. "Now, since the Commander had lunch with the President, I'm sure the President's physician rushed to evaluate his condition. He also called Trapp's time of death."

"Yes," Agent Todd said, slowly, "once he was sure the President wasn't in medical danger, he returned and…" She broke off, her eyes widening with realization of what Ducky had suggested. "He was gone nearly an hour."

Ducky nodded and said, "Yes. I'm sure the autopsy will show that Commander Trapp expired almost immediately."

"I owe you an apology, Doctor," she said, but Ducky was not flapped.

"Oh, please, it's Ducky to my associates," he said brightly. "I'm just relieved we straightened it out. It's inconsistencies like this that lead to conspiracy theories. It reminds me of a case once in New Orleans. A jealous husband shot his wife off a Mardi Gras float, right out of the clock at the corner of Bourbon Street."

Before Ducky could get too much of a head full of steam, Gibbs said, "Ah, doc, give it a rest. She's got work to do."

Agent Todd smiled and followed Gibbs to the President's cabin.

"Rule number three," Gibbs said, pulling out another Franks classic, "don't believe what you're told. Double-check."

Sarcastically, Agent Todd quipped, "Should I write these rules in my Palm Pilot, or crochet them on pillows?"

He opted not to answer, leading her into the room. Tony was seated behind the President's desk, turning the phone in his gloved hands as a television played. This, perhaps more than anything else since they'd established who they really were, infuriated Agent Todd.

"Oh no," she said, pointing a jabbing finger in Tony's direction, "I draw the line at him sitting in the President's chair."

"He's not using it," Tony argued, turning pleading eyes to Gibbs.

"Gibbs!" Agent Todd snapped.

Suddenly, Gibbs felt very much like a parent, and he didn't have time for babysitting. He turned to Tony and said, "If you're finished taking pictures, start bagging and tagging."

"Just waiting for you, boss," Tony said, springing into action.

"Bagging and tagging what?" Agent Todd asked.

Gibbs looked around at the cabin, his eyes lingering on the desk. "Well to start with," he said, gesturing to the food, "everything." He pointed back to the chair Tony had just unoccupied. "President was sitting there?"

"Pretty good bet," she said in a snarky tone as Tony pulled out an evidence bag, "since it is his desk."

Gibbs held out his hand and took the evidence bag from Tony, and he began to demonstrate crime scene procedure to Agent Todd. If she was going to be helpful, she needed to learn the basics.

"Okay, to maintain the chain of custody," he said, "take the item – in this case, Commander Trapp's lunch – place it in the evidence bag." He did so, taking the barbecue and bagging it. He sealed it, and smoothly folded it over to write on the label.

"Seal it," he said, "record all pertinent information, initial across the seal." He passed the bag to Tony and told him to keep it cold, and Tony passed another bag. Gibbs turned to Agent Todd and said, "Okay, why don't you try it?"

It was impossible to say how she felt about trying it, because at that moment she turned a nasty shade of pale and tossed her hand over her mouth. Gibbs had seen enough nauseous women in his life to recognize that look, and as she rushed out of the room, he followed her with the evidence bag.

"Oh, wait a minute!" he said, desperate to get to her before she got to the head. "Hey, wait! Wait a minute! Woah! Stop!" He turned her around against the bathroom door and shoved the bag in her face, opened wide. "In here, in here…"

She vomited into the bag, quick and clean, without much in the way of chunks or odd colors. He quickly sealed and labeled the bag. Agent Todd snarled at him.

"Can I rinse now that you've got your evidence?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, dismissing her. He was already returning to the President's cabin as she went into the bathroom. When he finished the label, he passed the bag to Tony. "Log it," he said. "Go find Ducky."

"You think she's got whatever killed the commander?" DiNozzo asked, but Gibbs shook his head. There was no way to tell, as they really didn't know how the commander got his stroke.

When Tony left, Gibbs took a seat and watched the clouds out the window, thinking of what an incident they'd have if Agent Todd died en route. He couldn't imagine the kind of mess that would leave for Chloe to wade through, and he wasn't sure even her skills would keep it out of the Bureau's hands.

/-/

"Problem," Chloe said, sitting across from the Director, who was reviewing a memo on Pacci's case. "I just heard back from my counterpart at the Secret Service. He's pretty sure Baer's made an agreement with the Bureau."

"Not with their Head, he hasn't," Director Morrow said, frowning.

"No, with Fornell," she said, rubbing her temple. "Fornell's good, Director, one of the best. He plays hardball, and he's got a lot more to bargain with than we do. They're going to order the body turned over to the FBI once it lands."

"You think Gibbs isn't expecting that and planning for it?" Director Morrow asked.

Oh, she knew he was. That was precisely what worried her. She didn't know what kind of mess he was going to leave in her lap, but they would end up with the body.

/-/

Ducky had Agent Todd lay down on a couch as he checked her over, and took her symptoms. When he'd taken her temperature, he sat up and said, "Low temperature. I think it's a stomach virus."

"I know it is," she said, glumly. "Did you use that thermometer on cadavers?"

With a chuckle, Ducky said, "Would you rather I use the liver probe?"

But Gibbs was focusing in on the case, knowing they were working on a time crunch. They had to get to Andrews any time, and he needed to know what to do with the body and where go once they'd established jurisdiction.

"Why are you so sure it was the flu?" he demands.

With a sigh, Agent Todd said, "It's the same symptoms Major Kerry had."

"Did you work together recently?" Ducky asked, putting away his thermometer.

"No."

"Well, if you didn't work with him, then now…? Ah!" Ducky added, uncomfortable, as Gibbs watched him recognize her disregarding of rule number twelve. He'd not given the rule a thought for some time, not since Chloe was hired. To Agent Lessing's credit, she and Wells hadn't even flirted on the job, much less showed signs of being a couple.

But for some reason, even thinking about it now, Gibbs had this nagging feeling that Agent Lessing and rule twelve were inextricably linked.

"Did you think I was a virgin?" Agent Todd asked Ducky, amused.

Embarrassed, Ducky said, "I'd…hoped not."

She laughed as Ducky left, and she sat up, making herself comfortable as Gibbs frowned back at her. He was still half-thinking about Agent Lessing, but he was also thinking about whether this development had implications for the case.

Agent Todd raised a challenging eyebrow and said, "You gonna lecture me about sleeping with people you work with?"

"Nope," he said, deciding it was better left for people on his staff. And he couldn't shake that feeling that there was something about that rule and Agent Lessing that was terribly important.

Agent Todd just nodded, and before either could start up a new conversation, someone came over the intercom and said, "Agent Todd, Agent Baer's on a secure line for you."

She sighed and slowly brought herself to a full sitting position, frowning at what he presumed were stomach pains.

"You want me to take that call for you?" he asked. With any luck, Chloe had gotten Agent Baer to hand NCIS jurisdiction, but he wasn't going to bet on it.

"I'd have to be dead," she said, and he nodded, laughing. As soon as she was gone, he supposed he'd take advantage of the opportunity to use the President's head, and in spite of Tony conducting interviews at the President's desk, he walked straight in, dealing with his zipper on the way.

No sense wasting time.

"Alright," Tony said to the steward he was questioning. "Well, thank you very much, Chief Steward."

"Yes, sir."

Gibbs gave several beats for the steward to leave before he questioned Tony.

"What'd you get?"

As he peed, Tony said, "Ah, food security's very tight. Incognito purchases, randomly selected stores. No one knows they're buying for Air Force One." Gibbs frowned as he heard the click of a camera. "Stewards usually prepared all the food, but today the President had ribs and coleslaw flown in from a smokehouse in San Antonio. So they only reheated them and served them."

"Anybody else have ribs?" Gibbs asked.

"No."

"Gibbs," Ducky said, answering the only question Gibbs could have asked by confirming his presence, "if the ribs were poisoned, then how come the President wasn't affected?"

"Maybe he's used to PapaJoe's barbecue." He flushed and smiled to himself. "If you two are through taking pictures of each other, maybe we can move that body out."

He led the way out of the room, hiding his smile and allowing them to act like guilty children before they got down to business, capitalizing on Agent Todd's temporary absence.

/-/

"Well?" Chloe said, getting on the phone to her cousin's partner at the FBI. "Deal is confirmed? Don't tell Fornell I called. I want to surprise him."

"Oh?" Charlie said, grin obvious through the phone. "Surprise him when…what, exactly? When your people politely hand over the corpse? Somehow, I can't see you doing that, Chloe, no matter how good Fornell was to you after everything."

"Don't," she said quickly, hoping he hadn't been about to mention what had forced her to leave the Bureau. "Look, I've got to go. I've gotta check in with some local LEOs on another body, get some evidence sent over. I'll send those chocolate-covered macademias, straight from the source."

"I love your mom."

"Don't say that too loudly," she teased before saying goodbye and hanging up, quickly dialing the Director's extension. She had some very tense news to deliver.

/-/

Once Tony and Ducky were in place, Gibbs returned to the crime scene, pleased that Agent Todd hadn't yet returned. It gave him time to practice the face he used when he was forced to schmooze.

When Agent Todd came down the stairs and saw the scene so heavily changed, she said, suspiciously, "Where's the body?"

He summoned all his innocence and said, "I don't know."

They both laughed, which was a mild relief. It made it easier to tell the lies, knowing she knew he was lying.

"You move it to the off-ramp for a fast getaway?" she prompted, and he just smiled and took a sip of coffee. She pulled on her coat and sat down as the plane started its descent.

Gibbs was just wishing he didn't have to do it this way when she said, "It won't work, Gibbs. I've been ordered to turn the body over to the FBI at Andrews."

Apparently, Chloe's ability to work magic had been thwarted for now. He'd have to rely on her stepping up her game.

"You could stall them until we get off," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"No, I can't," Agent Todd said, smiling almost regretfully. "I won't defy a direct order. I'm sorry, Gibbs."

"Never say you're sorry," he began, almost out of habit, but thinking of how he'd ignored rule twelve earlier, he stopped himself from reciting the rest. "Ah, you don't have to crochet that one."

She smiled, but she was uncomfortable with the whole scenario. That might work to his advantage later, on multiple counts, but he prepared himself for a showdown where he'd have to do some prize acting at Andrews.

The Captain's voice said, "Folks, please fasten your seatbelts. We're beginning our descent into Andrews at this time."

They both buckled up, and Gibbs was already trying to decide what to say to Chloe when she met him at the airport.

/-/

Chloe was fuming as she let in Ducky, surreptitiously slipping a body bag in with bagged evidence.

"I'm going to kill him," she muttered as she hid her face and glanced over to where Gibbs and Fornell were discussing the arrangement. "What's in the other body bag?"

"We'll tell you on the road," Ducky whispered, winking. "Out of curiosity, why are you hiding?"

"I know Fornell," she said softly. "We want to get out of here cleanly and quickly, and that means no stopping to chat. I'll get the van warmed up."

Ducky nodded, and she turned over the engine as soon as she was in the driving seat, licking her lips, waiting for Gibbs to get in the back with Ducky. As soon as the door closed, she turned around, but Gibbs signaled her to drive.

"We'll talk when we're clear," he said.

"Tony?"

"Don't worry about it, Lessing, just drive."

She did, clearing them from the airport. She was about to ask whether they wanted to take the same road as the other van, but Gibbs put a phone on speed dial, and she frowned.

"Axelrod?" he said, putting it to his ear. "You know that favor I asked for? They're leaving Andrews. Stay close."

"How did you set that up?" she asked, pulling onto the freeway.

"Very carefully and very quickly," he said. "I've got another call to make, Lessing. Then you'll get your answers." She bit her lip as he dialed again, this time putting it on speaker.

A few rings, and then, "Hello?"

It was Tony, and he was whispering, and Chloe almost swore when she realized what they'd done.

"We're in the clear," Gibbs said. "You can get out of the body bag."

"You're completely insane," Chloe hissed, hoping it was enough under her breath that it couldn't be heard on the other side of the line.

"I never thought I'd say this," Tony said nervously, "but I'm not sure I want to."

"Fine. You've got the search Commander Trapp's apartment tonight."

"Oh, Gibbs, come on! It's one AM!"

Chloe rolled her eyes. Like the rest of them hadn't had just as long of a day.

"Agent Axelrod is trailing you to pick up the body bag when the FBI tosses it," Gibbs said calmly.

"That's funny, Gibbs, really funny. Especially since—"

He cried out, and trailed off, and Chloe turned around, horrified as Gibbs hung up the phone.

"What was that?" she demanded. "What just happened?"

He smirked at her, which she could see in the rearview mirror, and he said, "I guess they found him."

Chloe wanted to skin him alive.

/-/

Almost as soon as they were in the Navy Yard, Chloe rounded on Gibbs. She demanded why she wasn't told the plan from the very beginning, and he headed her off, knowing that she had a job to focus on.

"We can talk later," he said sternly. "Right now, you've got to be in MTAC. You know there's a crisis you've got to charm us out of."

"It doesn't work like that, Gibbs," she said, frustrated. "For the dozenth time, I can't just mop up every mess you make!"

"That's your job."

"And yours is to follow some semblance of protocol," she said, frowning, "or at least tell me what to expect when you don't. I _can_ lie, you know."

"Not to them, you can't," he whispered. "Not to the Bureau. Tell me you don't know that Fornell." She hesitated. "Case closed. Get up there."

/-/

Chloe stood as casually as possible at Director Morrow's side, Gibbs's words still stinging in her ears as they discussed the matter with the Secret Service and FBI Directors. She hated these kinds of meetings, but sometimes…. Gibbs was right. Sometimes they were necessary.

"Special Agent Gibbs has been operating under my direct orders," Director Morrow said, only half-lying.

"Agent Todd was also acting under orders," the Secret Service man said.

"As was Agent Fornell," Chloe's former boss said, glancing at her with a small frown.

"Tom, this is no time for turf wars. Not after 9/11. And especially when the President's life may be at risk."

Chloe made a small hand sign under the level of the camera, one she knew the Director would see out of the corner of his eye and he nodded slightly.

"I'd like to think this is not about turf, Mark. Rather that we all believe we have the right people for the job. We shouldn't be agency directors if we didn't."

Mark, the Secret Service man, said, "You're offering a shared investigation?"

Chloe let her thumb twitch, not that he needed the signal. He knew what he was doing.

"I am."

"Who leads?" the FBI director asked, leaning in. "Your man?"

"We do have the body," Director Morrow said with a small smile, and the Secret Service Director gave a sarcastic grunt. "And let's not overlook the fact that my liaison officer is the best in the business. Do we have a deal?"

Chloe stepped back, drawing herself out of frame. She didn't want to look like she was a puppet-master while they considered the terms. As soon as terms were agreed, she took her cue and hurried to meet Gibbs down in autopsy.

/-/

Gibbs met Chloe in the elevator and she told him they'd earned the jurisdiction. She had half a mind to stop the elevator, he knew, from the look in her eyes, but he'd save her talk for later. Chloe would never slow an investigation if she could help it, which was one of the things he liked about working with her. She was good at smoothing corners and cutting through red tape.

On the way from the elevator to Autopsy, they passed Gerald who said, "I found Abby; she's on the way in."

"Did you wake her up?" Chloe asked, glancing at her watch.

"No, I called her on her cell. Sounded like one phat party."

Gibbs wondered what that meant, but Chloe just laughed and led the way into autopsy, where Ducky was examining the body with a magnifying glass.

"Find anything, Ducky?" he asked.

"Nope, and I won't for hours," Ducky said, lifting an arm to get a better look. "I've just begun examining the body for needle marks."

"You think somebody stuck him?"

"I don't know."

"Anything on the uniform?"

"Not that I could see. I've sent it up to Abby."

Chloe leaned over the body, frowning at it, and she pointed at a spot.

"What's that?"

Ducky inspected the spot quickly and Gibbs held his breath, hoping they had something as the magnifying glass went over it. "A mole," Ducky said, mildly impatient. "Both of you should go home. Get some sleep. I would if I could, this is gonna take all night. What's left of it."

"I'll help Abby process the evidence," Chloe said, frowning. "I need to be on call, anyway. Goodnight, Ducky."

She left, but Gibbs wandered to the side counter and grabbed a roll of paper towels. He put it down on a nearby autopsy bed and laid down, using the towels as a pillow. He groaned, feeling the relief of letting his feet up after the long, stressful day he'd had. He didn't know how Chloe could do it, negotiating like that all the time. It was twice as hard as his work, he was certain.

"Ducky," he asked as he closed his eyes, "why would Abby go to a fat party?"

"Jethro," Ducky said, almost amused as he turned off the overhead light, leaving only his work lamp, "get some sleep."

/-/

Abby was examining the uniform still, quite some time later, when Chloe sipped at a Caf-Pow, explaining the whole of the day to her in excruciating detail.

"Sometimes," Chloe sighed, "I don't know how I'm supposed to do it."

"Do what?" Abby asked, setting up the UV light for the uniform.

"Work with Gibbs," Chloe said mournfully. "He still doesn't trust me."

"I doubt that," Abby said. "He's just not…cuddly. If he didn't trust you, he wouldn't leave such big messes for you to handle all the time. He knows you can cut it, and that you'll back him."

Chloe hummed and frowned at the Caf-Pow.

"How did we ever drink this stuff in college?" she asked, setting it aside and wishing for some tea. She was past the time in her life when she could easily pull these all-nighters, but tea was so much more palatable.

"How did we do without it as freshmen?" Abby said, grinning. The two girls shared a wistful smile as Tony came in with a massive box of evidence.

"Abby?" he said.

"Yeah?" she asked, returning to her work.

"Find anything on the uniform?"

"So far, no dice," Chloe said, leaning back in her chair. "But there's still a lot to try."

He nodded, setting the box down. "Well, I think I found how he was poisoned."

Tony took bags out of the box and laid them out on the countertop, and both women gathered around for a look. It was bags and bags of health supplements of all description.

"This guy had enough vitamins, herbs, and organic food to open his own health market," Tony said. " _If_ he was poisoned, I think you'll find it laced into one of these."

Abby signed a label to keep the chain of custody, and Chloe opened the bag as Abby picked up the next one.

Abby said, "So what are you gonna do while we're finding poison in a health snack?"

"I'll wait," he said with a yawn.

"There's a futon, by the cabinet over there."

Tony clasped his hands together in benediction. "Oh, bless you," he said eagerly.

Chloe laughed, "You became a priest in your off-time?"

He frowned, curious.

"Curse you?" he said, curious. Abby laughed and Chloe rolled her eyes, and he said, "You've had a long day, too, Lessing. Care to join me if it's a futon built for two?"

"It's not," she said, smirking. "And I've got work to do. Sleep tight, dear."

He didn't argue, not being serious about the offer, and he went under the desk to nap on the futon while the two women worked, with every intention of working through the night.

/-/

As Ducky gave his presentation to everyone, including Todd and Fornell, Gibbs snuck a glance at Chloe, who had been the last to arrive. She'd stayed up all night with Abby, from what Gerald had said, and Gibbs was surprised to see that she showed very little signs of wear. Yes, she was young still, but she looked a little too fresh to have not slept in over twenty-four hours.

And what was more, the way Agent Fornell brightened and relaxed when she entered made Gibbs suspicious, so he kept wondering just how well the two knew each other.

Ducky pointed to a yellow spot highlighted on the brain scan of the commander, which was up on the widescreen television.

"My neural pathology exam indicates that our victim succumbed to a cerebral embolism," he said. "Here, in the parietal lobe. I also found a number of clots, most of them centered in the renal artery."

"Isn't that unusual?" Agent Todd said. Gibbs saw Chloe's shoulders tense, and he wondered why.

"Oh, not at all," Ducky said. "In most cases of arterial thrombosis, clots will develop over a period of minutes or hours, spread to the rest of the body."

"But what caused them to develop in a healthy young aviator?" Gibbs prompted.

"Abby's turn," Chloe said softly. "Ducky couldn't find a medical answer in the autopsy."

Abby nodded and said, "Well, I did a fibrinogen test. The procoagulate numbers were high, but they weren't off the charts."

"Any drugs that might induce the clotting?" Fornell asked.

"Well, yeah, but none of those popped up. I only iso'ed the epinephrine that was injected when he got jolted and juiced on the plane."

"No vitamins?" Tony asked. "Herbals?"

"The guy was an organic freak," Abby said. "We were at it for ages. I mean, he probably whizzed green. But none of that'll cottage cheese your blood."

"And we tested the food from Air Force One," Chloe said softly.

"Everything that was bagged and tagged," Abby said, nodding. "Ribs, coleslaw, barby sauce…it was all negative for toxins. I mean, that stuff will kill ya, but it'll take, like, thirty years. Do you dudes in the Secret Service ever think about throwing yourselves in front of the President's diet?"

Gibbs and Chloe both chuckled, but Agent Todd just smiled, ruefully.

Agent Fornell, however, was prompting them to get back to business.

"So, you're both saying he wasn't murdered?"

"However freakish and tragic," Ducky said with a shrug, "it apparently was a natural death."

"I want my people to check your results."

"Of course. You and Agent Todd will be receiving copies of all our tests."

"I'll be sending those out today," Chloe assured him, and Fornell nodded, his body turning toward her. "Let me know if there's anything else you need, and we'll see if I can get it, Tobias."

"No, that does it for me, Chloe," Fornell said. He glanced at Tony, raising an eyebrow. "How's your butt?"

Tony gritted his teeth in a smile and said, "Still bouncing on the beltway."

Fornell held out his arm to Chloe, who took it, leading him out of the building, to the elevator. Gibbs narrowed his eyes slightly as the two began to chatter, wishing he could be a fly on the wall for that conversation. As Agent Todd turned to follow them, though, Gibbs knew he needed to be a fly on the wall somewhere else, and he called her back, holding out a stick of gum.

"Kate," he said, and she took the gum with a suspicious frown. "When's the President returning?"

"Uh, tomorrow," she said, flustered, glancing over to Chloe and Fornell. "Noon. I'm flying back tonight to rejoin the detail."

"Mind if I tag along?"

Chloe was going to kill him, but some things were worth it. Agent Todd waffled, trying to decide what to say.

"Please?" he added in a childish, sing-song way he knew would boost her ego.

The smug look she gave him said it clearly worked, and she said, "You can. Your Sig Sauer can't. We have a rule: no weapons on Air Force One unless they're Secret Service."

She popped the stick of gum in her mouth, obviously thinking he wouldn't go for this rule, but Gibbs knew one thing about rules: there were ways around them. If there were weapons on board, that was all he needed. Lessing could run point here. He took off his sidearm and tucked it in a drawer of his desk. He pulled on his coat, and as he passed Abby and Ducky he whispered, "Keep looking."

He'd tell Chloe in the lobby, if she didn't have the Fed with her.

/-/

Chloe sat with Ducky and Abby, still furious that Gibbs took off without her knowing again. A few whispered words on the way out of the building was not at all the same as a briefing, and she had no idea what his famous gut was telling him about the case.

"Ducky, we have tested everything," Abby said, frustrated. "Mineral acids, organic acids, alkaloids, bacterial poisons…"

"You know, Abby, nature always proves to be a far more elusive and powerful killer than man."

Ducky left after he said this, and while Chloe knew he meant that the stroke could have just been a natural thing, she could see from Abby's expression that he got the wheels turning.

"What are we testing now?" she asked softly.

"You're not testing anything," Abby said, smirking. "You're getting me a Caf-Pow and explaining how you knew Agent Fornell so terribly well."

Chloe sighed, rolled her eyes, and patted Abby's arm on her way out of the lab. Caf-Pow for Abby, coffee for her, such as it was in the building.

/-/

Gibbs watched the new Football carrier eat his lunch, and he thought about the look in Chloe Lessing's eyes as he told her to run point on his way out. It was something like betrayal, and the angry look she shot Kate Todd wasn't any better. He had a feeling Chloe didn't like the Secret Service agent, although they'd barely worked together, and yet Fornell – who was such an ass – clearly held a high rapport with her.

Sometimes, he really didn't understand that woman.

Agent Todd sat down across from him and said, "Expecting him to drop?"

Gibbs crossed to her and said, "I see you're over the flu," as he sat.

"Twenty-four-hour bug," she said, smiling. "Tim got over it yesterday. Tim is Major Kerry."

"Yeah. I kinda figured that."

It was distracting, to have rule twelve brought up so close to a thought about Chloe Lessing again, and being reminded of how much that rule bothered him in conjunction with her was aggravating.

Very defensively, Agent Todd said, "I met him for a drink yesterday. I told him we had to stop seeing each other. I mean, we hadn't been dating long. I mean, we knew each other on the detail for a couple of months before we started…dating. You know, when you're on the job 24/7, how else do you get to know someone?"

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at this rant, and he thought of Agent Lessing again, wishing he knew why. He was about ready to scratch rule twelve just so this enigma would stop haunting him, whatever it was.

"Church," he said dryly, and he watched her face twitch.

/-/

Chloe watched as Abby tested animal toxin after animal toxin, looking for something in the commander's bloodstream that would justify Gibbs's gut. Chloe was beginning to think there was nothing there as she finished the story about how she knew Fornell and how well, and Abby tested pufferfish.

Negative.

"You know, one thing Tobias did teach me," Chloe said softly, "is not to beat a dead horse."

"Don't start quoting rules Gibbs didn't make," Abby said sternly. "If you can't be helpful, go…not be helpful in the squad room or MTAC or your office. And if you want to be helpful, bring me another Caf-Pow."

Chloe rolled her eyes, said she'd check in the squad room and grab some Caf-Pow on her way back down.

Tony shouldn't be left on his own too long, anyway.

/-/

"Annie," Agent Baer said to a woman in the Press cabin, next to where Gibbs and Agent Todd were seated.

"Yes?" a feminine voice answered.

"The president's ready to see you."

Gibbs watched with interest as this Annie followed Agent Baer out of the cabin, past Gibbs and Agent Todd, up the plane.

"Where they going?" he asked softly once they were well past.

Agent Todd glanced at them and said, "The President promised ten minutes to each member of the press on board. Since we kicked them off at Wichita, he's playing catch-up."

Gibbs nodded thoughtfully, thinking how life often imitated art, and he said softly, "Three years before 9/11, Clancy wrote a book where a terrorist hijacked a commercial jetliner and crashed it into the Capital." He glanced into the press cabin. "In the Harrison Ford movie, the terrorists were reporters."

This agitated her, and she said, "Gibbs, everyone on board has been vetted by us for years. Except you."

He shrugged.

"In the film, the terrorists got their credentials from a Secret Service turncoat."

He decided to go to the head to clear his mind, letting Caitlin Todd digest that one for a minute. And he hoped Chloe was turning up something back in Washington.

/-/

On the way up to get Caf-Pow and check on Tony, she was told by Tony that there was a body, and he needed her to come along because he was one short.

"It'll probably be nothing," he said.

She told Pacci, who was taking some evidence down to Abby for processing, that he should grab a Caf-Pow on Chloe's tab.

They pulled up to a street where some local LEOs were checking over a car, tape surrounding the scene. They got out of the car and Chloe pulled out her credentials. Tony spoke while they flashed their badges.

"Agents DiNozzo and Lessing," Tony said, "NCIS. What do you got?"

The officer gestured to the corpse.

"One dead Marine officer. No signs of trauma." He helped up a wallet and said, "Doesn't appear to be a robbery, there's still cash and credit cards in his wallet." He passed the wallet to Tony. "I've got two shootings already this morning. Since this guy's one of yours, I hoped you might take it."

Tony flipped open the wallet, frowned at the ID, and passed it to Chloe.

Major Timothy Kerry.

From the briefing Gibbs gave her, that was the name of the original Football carrier who had the stomach flu and had to pass it on to the back-up – the man already in NCIS cold storage.

"We'd be happy to," she said, handing the wallet back to Tony, who was already pulling out an evidence bag.

When the officer thanked them and got in his car, she turned her back to the other officers and said, "I'll call Ducky."

Before she could open her phone, however, it rang. Tony raised his eyebrows and said, "That was creepy."

"Abby," Chloe said, hoping it was good news as she opened her phone and pressed it to her ear. "Hey, Abby, what have you got?"

"I only identified the toxin!" Abby said cheerfully.

"So, it's murder," Chloe said, nodding. "Yup, that was going to be my guess. We've got another body. Can you call Ducky? Tony will text you the address. I'll go over the scene, and as soon as Ducky and Gerald get here I'm headed back your way. I need to see what you've got and get ready to call Gibbs."

"Alright, I'll pass it on."

/-/

Gibbs had explored the plane once more, and something didn't sit right with him. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it wasn't good.

"There's something different about this plain than Air Force One," he said to Agent Todd.

"This is Air Force One," she said, alluding to the semantics of the back-up becoming Air Force One in name when the President was onboard.

"You know what I mean," he said, annoyed.

Agent Baer was swapping press people, taking a Leonard up this time.

"There's some minor differences," she told Gibbs. "2900 is newer, has some minor updates."

"Like what?"

She sighed.

"Rear loading hatch is bigger on the 2900. Extra lavatory forward. Locks are digital on 29, and keyed on this."

She was about to say something else when a man on the intercom said, "Special Agent Gibbs, you have a teleconference call in Comm."

He stood and said, "Kate, I want to know every difference on this plane, no matter how small you think it is."

He walked away from her, and barely heard her prompting for a "please," but he wasn't in the mood for pleading. His gut was churning, and he wasn't surprised when Tony and Chloe were calling from MTAC.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Major Kerry is dead," Tony said. "D. C. cops found the body in his car on a street in Georgetown. Ducky and Abby'll update you."

Chloe signaled for windows to be opened into the lab and autopsy, so they could contribute.

"Another stroke, Duck?" Gibbs asked.

"I'm afraid so, Gibbs. But this time, there are multiple embolic infarctions. The Major must have received a higher dose than the commander."

"Dose of what, Abby?"

"A special venom," Chloe said, because Abby had her Caf-Pow straw in her mouth. "It's from costal taipan, which is a snake in Australia. Extremely toxic. Zaps your nervous system, clots your blood. So, seizure and stroke."

"The toxin is almost impossible to detect," Ducky said.

"Well, the truth is, Abby would have detected it if I hadn't interrupted her while she was ALSing the uniform," Tony said sheepishly, and Chloe's lips tightened.

Gibbs leaned back, eyes narrowing as he considered this situation.

"The venom was in the uniform?"

"Yeah," Abby said eagerly. "I found traces of DMSO in the collars and the cuffs. I think it was mixed with the venom to make it absorbed through the skin."

"Major Kerry was the intended target," Tony said, frowning. "When he came down with the flu, he didn't put his uniform on until yesterday."

"Of course, then there's the question of how the poison got in the uniforms," Chloe said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Well," Abby said cheerfully, "they both have tags from Dry Doc Cleaners on 19th Street."

"DiNozzo," Gibbs said, frustrated, "why are you standing there? Get a team and go hit that dry cleaners."

Tony glanced to the Director, who was standing nearby, and he came forward.

"Chloe and I have passed that baton on to the FBI," Director Morrow said. "This has all the earmarks of Al-Qaeda; unexpected, well planned, brilliantly executed. But to what end?"

"Wouldn't surprise me to hear Bin Landin on Al-Jazeera bragging about how he iced the President's Ball carriers," Tony said."

Director Morrow frowned and he said, "I don't think that's what he wants to brag about."

"No," Chloe said softly, narrowing her eyes. "Definitely not. Gibbs, Fornell said he would call when he finished at the dry cleaner. Do you need anything from me?"

Gibbs narrowed his eyes, wondering what to do next. He shook his head and signed off without a word, still considering. There were a lot of possibilities, and the one that seemed most plausible was not one he really wanted to speculate. He hurried down the stairs, and the new Football carrier was there. The young man leapt to his feet when he saw Gibbs.

"Where'd you get your uniform dry-cleaned?" Gibbs asked.

"Base cleaner at Quantico, sir."

Gibbs nodded and walked back down the aisle, and he came across Agent Todd on the way. She had a laptop open in her arms.

"I've accessed everything I could on the differences," she said, but he wasn't listening.

"We need to talk," he said, reaching for an office door. She stopped him, horrified.

"What are you doing? There's a campaign conference going on in there."

He wished he had Chloe for this one as he fought his frustration and said, "I need to talk to you in private."

"Well, there's no other private meeting room. You could ask the President to give up his office, but it might be a little weird."

Agitated and impatient, Gibbs took the laptop from her arms and tossed it down on a nearby seat. He ignored her protests as he pushed her into a bathroom and squeezed in after her.

"Hey!" she cried out, but he wasn't interested. He closed the door, took her weapon, and snapped at her.

"Sit down."

"What are you doing?" she cried, and he pointed her weapon at her.

"Commander Trapp was poisoned," he said sharply. "Australian snake venom. Hard to detect, mimics a natural death."

"What?" she said. "You think I did it?"

"Well, sweet pea, you were with him when he was poisoned."

"Yeah, so was the President," she snapped back. "You gonna accuse him?"

"No," he said, his heart pounding. "He wasn't with Major Kerry yesterday."

"Time?" she said, her mind working overtime to process this.

"Yeah," he said. "Stroked on a Georgetown street." She looked upset, but that could be faked, so he pushed harder. "You know, I bet it wasn't far from the bar where you to kissed and said bye-bye."

Well, that did it. Agent Todd started hitting him with balled fists, incredibly upset, crying. She swore at him, but when he wrapped his arm around her back, she buried her face in his shoulder to cry.

He sighed and said, "I gave it to you cold, wanted to see your reaction. Liars can't bail on cue."

When she had composed herself enough, he gave her back her weapon, and he gestured.

"Come on," he said, desperate to get back to work.

"You're still a bastard," she said, holstering her weapon again. Gibbs said nothing, and she said, "How were they poisoned?"

"Dry cleaner laced their uniforms with poison. Must be an Al-Qaeda sleeper."

"Tim must have recommended his dry cleaners," she said softly, "he…"

She trailed off, frowning, and Gibbs said, "What?"

Kate began to cry again as she said, "Yesterday, Tim told me that they had a drink and he gave Commander Trapp tips like that."

"Well, they've got to be after the President," Gibbs said, but what would killing the Ball carrier give them?"

"Nothing," she said, shrugging. "Another aide steps in."

His eyes widened, and he realized he'd been on to something all day.

"And another plane. This plane. They forced the President to fly his backup."

"Security's exactly the same," she argued, not seeing the point.

"But the plane isn't," he insisted. "And I'll be Security isn't either, until the President's on board. Al-Qaeda has to have planted something on this plane."

"It can't be a bomb," she reasoned, "they would have detonated it by now."

He hummed and said, "You said the locks were different."

"29 has digital ones," she recited, "this one has keys."

"Armory," he said, realizing. "They have keys to the armory. They copied the movie. They've vetted a reporter."

"That would take years," she said, putting in her earwig.

"So did setting up 9/11," he argued, leading her out of the bathroom.

She looked up from her comm chatter and said, "There's a medical emergency in the press cabin."

He shook his head and said, "It's a diversion. Cover the President."

He went back to the press cabin, she took off in the other direction. He grabbed a handgun from the armory, which was open, and he headed back up toward the President. The Football carrier was in front of the door, and one of the press officers between Gibbs and the Marine.

"Sir, stop right there," the Football carrier said sternly. "Stop right there, sir!"

"What's happened?" the journalist said.

"Freeze!" Gibbs said, pointing the handgun at the man. He could feel his pulse in his ears. "Get your hands in the air."

Very slowly, turning to face Gibbs, the man said, "Sure. Someone yelled for a doctor."

The man started firing an automatic toward Gibbs, letting it fire in an arc as his arm swung and his body turned. Gibbs didn't flinch, didn't hesitate, didn't wait for the arm to move too far. He fired once at Leonard's chest. The man fell to the floor, his finger limp on the trigger of the automatic. Gibbs shot twice more, once in the head and once in the chest. The man kneeled over, dead.

Others gathered around, drawn by the sound of guns, and he looked up at Kate Todd, whose eyes were wide. He passed the body on the floor of the plane with his gun, handing it to her with a wink, enjoying her astonished expression and wondering if Baer would want to report to NCIS, or if he could be the one to tell Chloe Lessing. He didn't think on it much, but for some reason Gibbs thought he'd really enjoy telling her that story.

/-/

With slightly trembling hands, Chloe gave a memo to Director Morrow, who read the information about the incident on Air Force One with a nod of satisfaction.

"Fornell called while you were in MTAC," he said with a small smirk. "Seemed disappointed it was me and not you. They've got everything they need for shutting down that cell at the dry cleaners. That was good work."

"Exhausting work," she said, sitting down. "Agent Baer said Gibbs wanted to be the one to tell me, but Baer exercised his privilege to make the call out. Wanted to gloat in his triumph, no doubt."

He narrowed his eyes and sat back in his chair, considering her as she tried to think of why Gibbs would give her a one-word message through Baer: basement. Was it an invitation? An order? A suggestion? Did he mean the basement of the building? And if so, which one? Or was it his basement, where he famously did woodworking?

Did she dare try to figure it out without a clearer message?

"He wouldn't do that," Tom said softly. "Gibbs wanted to be the one to tell you, Chloe, because he wanted to celebrate with you. Consider it a friendly gesture, a first step. He's starting to see you as an equal. Terrifying, actually."

"Why's that?" she said, smiling with good humor, even though she wasn't sure she believed him.

"You and Gibbs, working in tandem? He gives me enough headaches without you backing him up. Think of the trouble he'd feel licensed to cause with an expert fixer behind him."

/-/

The emergency vehicles surrounding Air Force One on the tarmac were a welcome sight, mostly because they weren't NCIS and they marked the end of Gibbs's investigation.

"I'm gonna be doing paperwork for a week," Agent Baer said darkly.

"Oh yeah, me too," Gibbs said, already wondering if he could talk Chloe Lessing into doing a lot of it for him.

"Agent Todd told me about her and Major Kerry when she tendered her resignation."

Now, that piqued Gibbs's curiosity, and he let his wheels turn as he considered the possibilities. There were a couple of empty desks in the squad room, one right between himself and DiNozzo.

"Are you accepting?" he asked.

"Of course, she broke the rules." Baer smiled tightly and offered his hand. "Well, thank you, Special Agent Gibbs."

"No sir, thank you," Gibbs said, shaking the man's hand.

The thanks was for many things. For being allowed the privilege of flying the plane in the first place, for allowing Kate free….

He deplaned with a smile. He was going to get a new agent – he was certain of it – and a good one, and then he was going to his basement, where he was about eighty percent sure Agent Lessing would be joining him for a drink. It would shape up to be a good night, all around. He spotted Kate Todd walking away from the scene, and he ran after her, determined not to let her get away.

"I heard you quit, Agent Todd," he said as he came level, and they both stopped.

"Happy news gets around fast," she said bitterly. "Yes, I resigned," she said with a sigh. "It was the right thing to do."

"Yup," he said brightly. "Pull that crap at NCIS, I won't give you a chance to resign."

"Is that a job offer?"

He said nothing, but his ride showed up in a convertible – his latest fling. He knew she wouldn't stay the night at his place, and he didn't expect Chloe to be around until quite late, so he would go about his life as usual until she showed.

/-/

Chloe's hands were shaking as she knocked on his door, tucking her hair behind her ear. She'd never been to Gibbs's house before, but it hadn't been difficult to find out where he lived. She waited, but there was no answer, and for a while she thought perhaps she'd misunderstood. Maybe he wasn't expecting her at all.

Then she sighed and muttered to herself, "You idiot, he said basement."

She tried the door and was a little nervous to find it was not locked. Then, on the inside, she realized it didn't have a lock. She called out his name, and he called back from somewhere below her. Once she found the stairway down to the basement, she went down, and was surprised to find him sanding the frame of a boat with the television on.

On the television, even more astonishing, was Fornell speaking to the press.

"Federal agents working in unison with the Secret Service were able to foil a terrorist attempt to assassinate the President while he was on board Air Force One. The body of the terrorist is being delivered to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, where FBI forensics experts will endeavor to identify him."

"Was it Al-Qaeda?" a reporter asked.

"That's all we know at this time."

Chloe hummed, and she started when Gibbs turned off the television, gesturing for her to come in. She sat on the bench where he cleared a space for her, and he poured them each bourbon. Chloe didn't drink it usually, but she didn't mind it. She and Abby drank their way through the whole alphabet of alcohol in college, and the only thing she struggled to understand was tequila. Somehow, she didn't think Gibbs was a tequila sort of man.

"Cheers," she said, taking her drink.

"Your friendship with Fornell," he said, watching her take a healthy gulp of the bourbon. She'd never understood sipping, and she didn't waste good alcohol by downing it in one – that was an insult to the distillery.

"What about it?"

"Was he your boss?"

"No," she said, stretching her legs. "He was my cousin's boss for years, and when I…. Well, he was the contact in the FBI for the…loan I was on, in England. I didn't answer to him, but he kept the records, so to speak."

"Did he recommend you leaving?"

"Actually," she said, frowning, "he tried to talk me out of leaving. Tried every way he could think of."

"Smart man."

Somehow, those two words, more than anything Gibbs had ever said to her, made her chest grow warm with pride and relief. In some measure, Tom was right. Gibbs wasn't rubbing in his victory, he was sharing it with her…like an equal.

"You don't like Agent Todd," he said, again not a question.

"I don't really know Agent Todd," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "She just…reminds me of someone I never particularly…understood."

"Who's that?"

"My mother."

Gibbs laughed, and he topped off her glass before refilling his own. Chloe glanced at the dark television screen and said, "We worked well this time, didn't we?"

"Chloe, we always work well together. I don't know what it is, but I don't think I've ever worked with someone who understood the way I work so quickly."

She frowned, and a flash of a face filled her memory, a face she'd been trying to forget for some time now. The harder she tried, the more it haunted her. She took another drink of her bourbon to keep from saying what had popped into her mind….

It was her gift, understanding how people worked. Finding a way to work with them, to work for them. It involved admiration, and the danger of being able to admire anything done well.

Ability and, it had been said, curse.

She smiled tightly and said, "Tell me about your boat."

Gibbs was intelligent. He knew she was opting not to say something, but whether he had even an inkling of what it was, he kept hidden. Instead, he took another drink of his bourbon and began to tell her the history of this boat frame, from the very first bit of wood he purchased for it to the sanding he'd been doing when she walked in.

 **A/N: So, we've now see Chloe and Gibbs "work" together, we've introduced Kate and Fornell, and Chloe has now seen Gibbs's basement. Want to let y'all know, I'll be skipping** _ **Hung Out to Dry**_ **, and going straight in for** _ **Seadog.**_ **Not every episode will be covered (some are just irrelevant to my plot), and not every chapter will be an episode from the show. There will be some completely original snippets. Also, not all episodes will feature Chloe heavily. Some will feature Nathan Wells, the Internal Liaison. Some will feature both. They've both got their own plots and secrets, but Chloe's the main event.**

 **Also, as we hit review targets (first one being five reviews, then ten, then fifty, etc.), I will start posting background drabbles-as-chapters in a companion story to this. So, want to know about Chloe's childhood, college and grad school, and eventually her mysterious FBI mission in London? Review, review, review!**

 **Review Prompt: Chloe doesn't like Kate. Is this going to be a lasting issue, or one like where Abby initially didn't like Ziva? Which do you think it is, and which would you prefer?**

 **Q &A: PLEASE ask questions. I'll answer any/all questions here! Don't be shy!**

 **-C**


	3. Seadog

**A/N: Sorry for the gap! I'll work on the drabble earned as promised, but this episode took me a lot longer to write than I'd planned, and other things in life took over attention. It's on my to-do list!**

 **-C**

"What have we got?" Gibbs snapped as he entered the cubicle space in the middle of the work floor. Tony's head snapped up as Kate put her purse away. Kate had been blending in well, but she and Chloe Lessing were still oil and water, and Gibbs had yet to put his finger on why.

"So much for small talk," Kate said.

Tony pulled out a little list he'd made and said, "Car crash in Quantico last night. No fatalities."

"Next," Gibbs said.

"Petty Officer caught shoplifting at Bloomingdale's."

Caught between amusement and annoyance, Gibbs said, "Is there anything worth over fifty grand at Bloomingdale's, DiNozzo?"

Tony's eyes narrowed and his head cocked slightly as he considered this very seriously before saying, "I don't think so."

"Then why would we handle it? Next."

"I heard a rumor about an ecstasy ring at Lejeune."

That was it. Gibbs stopped thinking cases and said, "You heard a rumor?"

Kate, far more amused than Gibbs could bring himself to be, said, "Oh, he's been searching for a case…any case, since I came in."

Tony read, presumably from his email, "All agents not working active cases are to attend a sexual harassment lecture at the NCIS Human Resource Training Center at zero-nine-thirty hours. Today."

Sexual harassment lectures had always been obnoxious, but in recent years they'd become increasingly unreasonable. Since Chloe Lessing had joined, Gibbs had attended two, and he hated it even more for noticing the subtle way Nate Wells grew increasingly tense and fidgety throughout the lecture, while Chloe stood at the back, shoulders tight and eyes on anything but the speaker. It was the only sign Gibbs had that there would be issues with rule twelve, and Gibbs wished he could unsee it.

"I cannot sit through another one of those," he said. "I will shoot myself."

Kate grinned and said, "You mean they actually train you guys how to harass?" she laughed, but Gibbs was struggling to find the humor. "Hey, I'm kidding," she said, blinking. "Except for Tony."

"For the last time, Kate," Tony growled, "I was only trying to get my seatbelt on."

"Right. Seatbelt."

Mercifully, the phone rang, and Gibbs snapped it up.

"Yeah, Gibbs."

"Gibbs," Chloe's voice answered through the line. "I've got Tony's salvation. Navy Commander corpse washed up on North Virginia Beach. I'm texting details to Tony and Gerald. And if you can find a way to pull me into this, I beg you, because Nate's got a case with Pacci and the Great Lakes, and I'm doing nothing, and I can't be doing nothing by zero-nine-thirty. Clear?"

It was everything he could do not to grin at her desperation, and he said, "Okay, we're on it."

He didn't wait for further information or thanks or pleas, but instead hung up the phone and announced, "Dead Navy Commander just washed up on North Virginia Beach."

"Yes!" Tony cried

"Shotgun!" Kate said, grabbing her gear.

"I hate when she does that."

Gibbs simply grabbed his gear and wondered why it seemed a good idea to take on more manpower, only to end up as a babysitter for unruly children.

/-/

Chloe sighed as she put the phone on the receiver and texted directions to Tony. She didn't look up, knowing Nate was giving her his amused look. He thought it was hilarious he was out of the sexual harassment talk and she wasn't, but she had high hopes for this Navy Commander. Rumor was a shot up boat. She was thinking Coast Guard, at the least.

"Tony will be so pleased," Nate said, and she finally did look up to see him smirking at her. "He might even give you a kiss."

She couldn't help but laugh, and she said, "Tony harasses everyone, Nate. It's not really harassment. It's loving. Anyway, you invite me for drinks and coffee often enough, I could probably file for harassment."

His face paled slightly, and she quickly added, "But it's not, so I'm not going to."

He didn't seem convinced, but he checked his watch and made his excuses for leaving, needing MTAC. Chloe just sighed and stabbed her pen at a notepad while she stared lazily at her email inbox.

/-/

When they arrived, the local LEO was talking to a woman who was very clearly a reporter, but Gibbs ignored her, pulling out his credentials and flashing his badge at the LEO.

"Gibbs, NCIS."

"It's about time you guys showed up," he said, clearly puffed up on the attention this death was getting him. Gibbs wished Chloe would have mentioned that the local LEO was an ass. "We've been running between the body and this boat all night long. Boat crashed ashore right in the middle of a beach blanket bingo. Hard to believe a Navy Commander getting mixed up in stuff like this."

"Stuff like what?" Gibbs demanded.

"Drug running," the man said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "DEA's working two dead drug dealers three miles north of here at Fort Story."

"Three miles up the beach and you tied it to the Commander?" Gibbs said disparagingly, but at least it was a way to repay Chloe for tossing this in their lap. Even if it was nothing, she could certainly pester the DEA from zero-nine-thirty to whenever the sexual harassment melee was over.

"They're all shot up," the idiot LEO said with a shrug. "So is his boat. Got to be a connection."

Realizing there was no way they were going to get anything sensible done until the woman standing with them left, Gibbs turned to her and said, "And you are?"

"Diane Fontaine, WXEK News," she said firmly. "I'd like to ask you some questions."

Before she'd even finished speaking, Gibbs barked, "DiNozzo!"

"Yeah?" Tony said, approaching.

"Escort Miss Fontaine off our crime scene please," Gibbs said, gesturing to the woman in question, and Tony turned on his charm.

"Miss Fontaine?" he said, gesturing and smiling, although she wasn't convinced. She turned to her crew, realizing she wasn't getting anything for the moment.

"Let's go, guys," Fontaine said, leading her people away, Tony following to make certain they left. Once she was out of earshot, Gibbs turned back to the LEO.

"Sergeant Linn, is it?" he said, smiling. "You in the habit of convicting people before the investigation starts?"

This stunned Linn out of his self-impressed stupor, and he said, "What? Hey, no. I—"

Whatever his pathetic excuses were, Gibbs didn't have to listen to them, because Ducky arrived and asked over the stupid man, "What have we got, Gibbs?"

"The Commander's wallet with this Sergeant's prints," Gibbs said, letting Ducky take the steak and run with it.

"You removed a wallet from a body without gloves?" he cried, outraged.

Linn looked startled and said, "I had to get the vic's name."

"He's not a vic," Ducky snapped. "He's a victim. Where did you learn crime scene procedure? Watching Kojak reruns?"

"Okay, now just hold on a minute," Linn said, frustrated, but Ducky ran right over him.

"What else did you do to my crime scene?" he demanded. "Alright, let's start at the beginning. Tell me what you did when you got here…from the top."

Gibbs just grinned, pulling out his phone to call Chloe, pleased to let Ducky handle the Sergeant while he gave Lessing the good news.

/-/

She snatched up her phone eagerly as soon as it began to ring.

"Lessing," she said, checking her watch. She still had time for it to be freedom.

"It's Gibbs," he said through the receiver, and she thought he might be smiling. "You can clear your morning schedule, if you'd like. The local LEO, who's a dunce, by the way—"

"Sorry," she sighed, smiling as she relaxed in her chair.

"Yeah, he said the DEA is doing a drug running case out of Fort Story, more shot up boats. It's three miles, but it's possible there's a connection. Think you can drag that out to earn your freedom?"

Chloe licked her lips and pulled out her rolodex, flipping through for her buddies at the DEA.

"Gibbs," she said cheerfully, "if your victim and their drug runners sneezed in the same season five years ago, I'll find it. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you."

"Erase that LEO?"

"I'll drop a few subtle complaints. Cheers."

/-/

Gibbs walked down to the beach, and he saw Kate taking photographs of the scene. When she heard him approaching, she turned and said, "Looks like a herd to elephants went through here."

"Yeah, just one fat local LEO. Alright, Kate, bag this," he said, handing her the wallet. "I'll do the photos."

She blinked, confused, and said, "Tony told me what to do."

"Tony doesn't tell you what to do. I do. Your elephant said the Commander's boat got shot up. Why don't you grab an extra kit from the truck and work that scene?"

Kate started, and her eyes widened with excitement and confusion. He could see her breathing change through her layers of clothing.

"By myself?" she clarified.

"You need help?" he teased.

"No! I got it!" she said, about to rush over to the boat.

"Hey," he called after her, "have it towed back to the garage when you're done. And get the witness reports while you're at it!"

He took a few pictures before Tony sauntered over and said, grinning, "I need more assignments like that, Boss."

"Did you get her number?" Gibbs asked, thinking with amusement of the sexual harassment shindig.

"Oh, yeah!"

"You think he was shot or drowned?" Gerald asked, considering the body without touching it.

"Well, either way, he's dead," Tony said, frowning.

Gibbs smiled and said, "That's too bad. Good guy. He got you out of that sexual harassment lecture."

He took another picture, from behind the head, and he wondered how things were getting along, talking to the DEA.

"I'd rather be at the lecture," Tony said.

Ducky came over to the scene, fuming and spluttering and spitting mad. He shook his finger in the air as he declared, "That man is an imbecile. He shouldn't be a school crossing guard!"

"Yeah, move," Gibbs said, to Tony. "Haven't heard you this pissed since you shoved that French flic off a cliff, Duck."

Gerald's head snapped up and he said, "You shoved a French cop over a cliff?"

Setting up, Ducky shrugged it off and said, "There was a lake below."

Grinning, Gibbs said, "Sixty feet below. Duck, this crime scene's a mess. Can we move the body?"

"Why not? The imbecile obviously has."

Gibbs gestured and said, "Let's turn him over and see if he was shot in the back."

As soon as the body was over, it was clear he'd been shot in the back, but not through. Gibbs was already pulling out his phone.

"I guess we can rule out accidental drowning," Tony said, before snapping a picture.

"Oh, my friend," Ducky sighed. He shook his head. "Even if you'd survived the water, you would have never have walked again."

Gibbs was already dialing Chloe's number.

"The DEA found a couple of bodies up at Fort Story that might be tied to this," Gibbs said. "I put Chloe on the case, and I'm going to have her let them know we're on the way."

Grumbling under his breath, Ducky said, "At least they know not to contaminate a crime scene."

"Hey, you two clean this up – bag him," Gibbs said to Tony and Gerald. "Meet us up there."

/-/

"Lessing," Chloe said, rubbing her eyebrow.

"Gibbs. What d'you know about the DEA investigation? Duck and I are headed up that way."

Chloe pulled her notes close and said, "Yeah, Agent Kent Fuller is running point. I don't know him personally, but my connections tell me he's solid enough. Likes to get things done. Gibbs, I filed that complaint about Linn. Anything else you need from me right away? I've got the FBI on hold for some reason, and I don't like leaving them on hold too long. They have a way of showing up when I don't answer."

"I want you to tell Fuller we're on our way, and then deal with the FBI. Oh, and Tony's not as grateful as you thought he'd be. Keep that in mind."

"Will do," she said, grinning as she switched to a fresh line and began to dial the number she'd scribbled down for Fuller. Tony would owe her drinks, later.

/-/

A man with a stern expression and a straight posture was speaking to another man with a similar posture. Gibbs saw recognition in the first man's eyes, which told him this was Fuller.

"This must be him," Fuller said to the other man. "Special Agent Gibbs?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said, nodding to Fuller.

"Special Agent Lessing called," he said, "said you were coming. Agent Kent Fuller, DEA. This is Captain Bradstone, Army C.I.D."

Gibbs nodded, greeting the Captain, and gestured to Ducky, and said, "Our M.E., Doctor Mallard."

"Agent Fuller," Ducky said, shaking hands. "Captain."

"Looks like your Navy man fell in with a bad crowd," Fuller said, although Ducky wasn't listening to Fuller.

"Ah, Gibbs," Ducky sighed, looking around the scene, "this scene is pristine."

An amused Fuller said, "We're not amateurs."

"Who says they're connected?" Gibbs prompted.

"How many guys you know go out fishing in the middle of the night?"

"Me," Gibbs said, smiling. Chloe Lessing had just teased him about it the other day, asking him how he could fish if he couldn't see. He offered to take her sometime, so she could find out for herself.

Fuller just smiled and said, "Well, I guarantee you these two guys didn't. They met up with cargo ships off the coast and bring in coke."

Gibbs nodded, looking at the bodies, and said, "Where's their boat?"

"There's a drug war going on," Fuller said, shrugging. "I figured they got jacked for the boat and the coke."

"Captain, is C.I.D. working this crime scene?"

Captain Bradstone said, "The M.E.'s not available till tomorrow. And since this may have something to do with your Navy Officer, the Army has no objection to NCIS and DEA working it. Just send us all your reports."

"Yep, thanks, Captain," Gibbs said, making a mental not for Chloe to add C.I.D. to the updates list for the case. He knelt near the body and said, "Okay to touch, Duck?"

"You have my permission."

He knelt and opened the pocket, wondering what to make of the whole mess. He pulled out a wad of cash and said, "How many drug dealers you know dump the bodies and the cash?" he asked, holding it up so Fuller could get a good, long look.

Gibbs had a sudden curiosity why the FBI was willing to hang out on hold with Chloe.

/-/

Chloe sat on Gibbs's desk as he sat in his chair and said, "So, I've added your C.I.D. man to the contact list, and I have a message from Fuller, wants all autopsy findings send to him straight as we have them."

"Go ahead," Gibbs said, and the elevator doors opened, showing a very angry Caitlin Todd.

Chloe had no way to explain her aversion to Kate, but it was largely mutual. It would be simplistic to blame it on their feelings about Tony, Kate finding him mildly repulsive and Chloe finding him entertaining. But it was a start.

"Thanks for waiting, guys," Kate said dryly, irritation rolling off her in waves.

"Chain of custody, Kate," Gibbs said, flicking Chloe's leg under the desk level as a cue to move before Miss PC made some comment about how Chloe's position on Gibbs's desk was inappropriate. "You had to stay with the boat."

Chloe slid off the desk and crossed to the empty desk across, sitting on it, trying not to smirk at Kate, who had clearly been hazed.

"I'm not stupid, Gibbs," Kate said darkly.

"Never said you were."

"I didn't have to ride on a tow truck with that boat, now did I?" Kate snapped, and Chloe faked a cough as she shared a glance with Tony. "You do this to all the newbies, or just the females?"

"Sounds like hazing, the way you tell it," Chloe said coolly. "But that would be sexist. D'you honestly think they're sexist?"

"Ask me who's buried in Grant's tomb," Kate said. "It's a tougher question."

Chloe felt her shoulders tighten, and her body jerked forward in a small motion, but she stopped herself before she slid off the desk. She'd not been in a fight since junior high, but she'd never left behind the instinct for it. As badly as she wanted to hit Kate, though, she knew there was probably a rule about that.

"Okay, okay," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes slightly, perhaps seeing Chloe's reaction, "fun's over. Give me the highlights."

Kate put her gear down and said, "Nine students from UVA were having a beach party. Around zero-two-thirty, they heard what they first thought was fireworks out on the water."

"Gunfire," Tony said.

Condescendingly, Kate answered, "Good guess, Tony. The Whaler had six holes in its stern, two in the engine housing."

"Your Commander was retreating from something," Chloe said, tilting her head as she tried to picture the beach in her mind, tossing in Fort Story.

"Probably from a larger boat they heard racing up the coast," Kate said, nodding. "About fifteen seconds later, the Mary Celeste came roaring out of the dark and onto the beach. Scared the hell out of them."

Chloe hummed, and Gibbs prompted, "What'd you find on the boat?"

"Fishing gear," Kate said, reading off her list, "bait, coffee Thermos, ham sandwich. I logged everything. Sent it to Abby."

"No drugs?" Tony asked.

"No," Kate said, puzzled. "Is there a drug connection?"

"That's what our dear friends at the DEA suppose," Chloe said, stretching her arms. "They've got two aerated dealers floating ashore to Fort Story last night. Agent Fuller's convinced the two have to be related."

"Well, there were no drugs on the Whaler," Kate said, shrugging.

"You sure?" Tony asked, smiling. "I knew a granny in Baltimore – hid a kilo of "H" in her horse's rectum."

"No horse on the boat, Tony," Kate said, crossing her arms. "We're working a joint investigation with the DEA?"

"Yep," Gibbs said. "Chloe's keeping us on point, Ducky's got all three bodies autopsied, and Abby's drying the money."

"Money?" Kate said, raising her eyebrows.

"Yeah, funny, that," Chloe said with a smile. "Gibbs found sopping wet hundreds all over the drug dealers. Ever seen something like that?"

"I've got to see those bills," Kate said, inordinately excited.

"Why?" Gibbs asked.

"I did work for the Secret Service. We tend to get all hot and bothered over large sums of hundred dollar bills."

Tony raised an eyebrow and said, "Is that what does it for you?"

"What does it for me, Tony," Kate said, "is a mystery you will never solve."

Chloe looked down at her fingernails, picking at her thumb as she kicked her legs lazily.

"It's Grant, isn't it?" she said. "In Grant's tomb."

A frustrated Gibbs said, "Why do I feel like a high school principal?"

"I don't know, Boss," Tony said, and when Chloe looked up again, he was standing a bit straighter.

"If those college kids are right, whoever shot the Commander ran into the Chesapeake or up the Maryland coast. Find out which."

"I'm on it."

He took off, and Gibbs gestured for Chloe to follow him. If she knew him at all, she thought as she slid off the desk, they were about to get the details she was going to send to their friends at the DEA and C.I.D.

/-/

Gibbs stopped the elevator almost as soon as they got in.

"Fuller wants to be here when the autopsy is going," he said. "Call him in. I've already put Ducky on pause. I want you there while I'm following up on other leads."

He saw her lips twitch up slightly as she said, "Sure. Want me running him in circles, is that it?"

Gibbs just shrugged, starting the elevator as she pulled out her phone again.

"He didn't think people fished at night, either," he said, and she grinned, leaning against the corner of the elevator, turning her phone in her hands. "You still don't believe me?"

"God, no."

"Well, next Saturday night, you doing anything?"

"I am now," she said with a laugh. "Just tell me how to gear for it. Gibbs, does this count as sexual harassment? As someone who missed the lecture this year, I'm finding it hard to tell."

He felt his fists tighten for reasons he didn't think about, and he said softly, "If you were DiNozzo, I'd head slap you."

"Good thing I'm not DiNozzo," she said, sing-song, as she left the opening elevator.

Despite his better judgment, Gibbs's eyes traced down her back to her thighs, partially visible through her dress as she walked away.

Definitely not DiNozzo.

/-/

Chloe watched Fuller as he watched Ducky beginning the autopsy, and she smiled to Gerald as Ducky told another story. Chloe rarely got to hear them to the end, and she always enjoyed the opportunity.

"The South Pacific," he was saying, "has a number of different refreshments. I remember one – where was it? New Guinea or Timor? Whatever the case, the natives had this delightfully refreshing drink. It wasn't 'til years later I discovered it was made from a mixture of rum punch and water buffalo urine." Chloe smiled and he handed a sample to Gerald. "To Abby, please, Gerald. They'd never seen a white man, and my life was in jeopardy until—"

"I've got to report in," Fuller said quickly, clearly disturbed by the autopsy.

"There's a phone over there," Ducky said, but Fuller left autopsy, presumably to use his cell phone. "Oh, well," he said, shrugging and smiling at Chloe. "You'll enjoy this, my dear. As I was saying, my life was in jeopardy until I cured the chief's wife of a terrible yeast infection." Chloe smiled and nodded, leaning on a nearby table to take some of the stress off her feet as she watched him work.

/-/

Gibbs watched with narrowed eyes as on the squad room television, Ms. Fontaine, the reporter from the crime scene, was giving her report of the incident.

"Commander Farrell, a Navy ROTC instructor at Hampton Roads was found on North Virginia Beach this morning near the bodies of two alleged drug dealers. Commander Farrell, a founder of Urban Lights – a night basketball anti-drug program – may have been involved in smuggling illegal drugs into the Norfolk area. Expressing shock and outrage, a Community Center spokesperson said the Urban Lights basketball program will be suspended on all Norfolk Community courts…"

Gibbs turned off the television and decided to do a little digging in her story for himself.

/-/

Chloe rubbed her eyes as she sat at her desk, organizing her case notes and flagging certain sections for sharing with certain departments. She had a horrible feeling they were going to have more alphabet soup joining the party before the end of this, and she glanced at her rolodex, praying silently the FBI would stay out of it. She didn't need a mess with her past when things with Gibbs were starting to relax.

/-/

Gibbs approached the basketball game on the unlit, locked court. He checked the lock, jostling it to see if it opened. It was a solid lock, which meant they'd hopped the fence, despite its impressive height. The boys stopped the game to look at him, thinly-veiled nerves.

"You gonna kick our asses out?" one of the boys said.

"Nope," Gibbs said.

"You Five-Oh, ain't you?" the other boy asked.

"Sorta."

"Sorta?" the first boy said, frowning. "Yeah, right. I smell bacon."

Gibbs ignored the jab. These boys had felt targeted by police all their lives simply because of the neighborhood they were born in and the color of their skin. He glanced up at the fence and said, "Big fence to climb over."

"Not if you got hops," the quieter boy said, almost proudly.

"Whatchya want, One Time?" the bolder boy demanded.

"Get this lock off the gate," Gibbs said, flicking the lock. "You shouldn't have to hop a fence to play some basketball."

"You got heat to do something about it?" Kevin demanded.

"Maybe you do."

"We did," he said, and the boys laughed.

"That you did," Gibbs said, looking around the court. "It'd be better with lights." The boys tensed, laughter gone. "Answer me one question," he said. "I get the right answer, you have my word these lights will get back on."

"Shoot, Five-Oh," the quieter boy said, but his friend was much more cautious.

"Slow up, Bobby. What you mean…right answer?"

Gibbs leaned in and said, "Give me the wrong answer, I can't help you."

"Get out of here, Fed!" the boy said quickly, but Bobby seemed alarmed.

"What you doing, Bro?"

"He's a Narc, man. He's trying to get us to say Seadog was dealing."

Bobby shook his head and said, "So tell the bacon what he wants to hear if it gets our lights back."

Gibbs began to climb the fence as he kids argued over the matter.

"I ain't diming on Seadog!"

"Man, he's six feet below. He won't know."

"I will."

Gibbs's feet hit the ground, and their attention was back on him, and Bobby looked impressed and surprised as he said, "Man, you too old to hop wire."

"Want the question?" Gibbs asked.

"I know the question," the bolder boy said, frowning. "You're not going to like the answer."

"I will if it's the truth."

"Yeah, we could like. How you gonna know, Fed?"

"I'll know," Gibbs said, and the two boys exchanged a look. He had a feeling what their answer was going to be, and he was glad that it seemed to be the right one, but he needed to hear them say the words.

/-/

Chloe crossed her arms as the briefing in the front part of the lab on the money recovered was carried out by Kate. Fuller was present, which was the primary reason Chloe deigned to show up, and she tried to listen politely. The case was important, but she and Kate struggled to be around each other.

"For the 1996 series," Kate said, "Treasure introduced microprinting as a countermeasure against computer printers and copiers. Good enough to stop high school kids, but not rouge countries and a few of the world's top forgers. It's got one tiny flaw."

They leaned over the bill and looked at the magnified microprinting. Chloe laughed when she saw the error.

"I'll be damned," Gibbs said with a grin.

"What?" Tony asked, frowning at the bill.

"You'd think a man who could find heroin in a horse's ass could find this," Kate said with a smirk.

With this, Fuller blinked at Tony, startled, and he said, "You reached into a horse's ass?"

"I had a glove on," Tony said defensively. "United States," he read off the microprinting. "What's wrong with that?"

Chloe smiled and said, "Look again, Tony."

He looked over it again and lit up as he said, "Untied States! So, the forger was dyslexic."

"Not just the forger," Kate said, and Chloe's smile fell.

Gibbs narrowed his eyes and said, "Who would pay drug runners with counterfeit money?"

Chloe's first thought was that it had to be someone who was a big gambler, but Fuller said, "I know you don't want to hear this, Gibbs, but the Commander could have bought with bogus bills. That's why they killed him."

Gibbs bristled, glanced at Chloe with a look that clearly said she needed to deal with Fuller, and then he said, "Commander Farrell was not dealing drugs. Tony, where did you find that boat was headed when they dumped the two bodies?"

"Well, according to the tide charts, since the bodies washed up at Fort Story, the boat had to have been entering the bay."

Kate almost rolled her eyes and said, "Well, that narrows it down. Even if we knew the marina, we still don't have a description of the boat."

"Then we'd better get one," Chloe said softly, frowning at Fuller thoughtfully. "We need to talk to someone who has it. Are you able to bring in the drug runners' boss?"

"Trujillo?" Fuller said, frowning back at her. "Sure. For as long as it takes for him to get his lawyers down here."

"Bring in the dirtbag that runs the rival gang, too," Gibbs said, catching on, and Chloe nodded.

Fuller looked between Gibbs and Chloe, puzzled and bewildered. He said, "These aren't a couple of sailors caught buying grass. These are pros. They won't tell you the name of their mothers."

Chloe's lips twitched as Gibbs said, "No offense, but maybe you just don't use the right tone of voice with them. Bring 'em in." Fuller shrugged and left the room to make the calls, and Gibbs turned to Kate and said softly, "Is there anybody at your old agency you can trust?"

She narrowed her eyes.

"Trust to what?"

"Find out who forged these notes and where they've been circulating," Gibbs said.

Kate glanced at Chloe with the briefest of triumphant nods and said, "Shouldn't be a problem."

"He means without telling their boss," Chloe said, smiling. "Without going through proper channels, which is me." Kate hesitated, and Chloe's smile became a smirk as she said, "That won't be a problem, will it?"

Kate sighed and said, "Gee, now why would that be a problem?"

Abby knocked on the window, and Chloe turned her attention as she signed that she got a match, and Gibbs signed back. They carried on a conversation, but Chloe paid it little attention. She was thinking of how she was going to deal with Fuller when he came back in, and how she'd handle the Secret Service, should Kate's friend not be as trustworthy as Kate assumed.

"What are you doing?" Tony asked, frowning.

"Communicating," Gibbs said, as he continued his conversation with Abby.

"Abby signs?"

"Fluently," Chloe said. "Her parents were deaf. She taught me in college, but I've never been as quick."

Tony raised his eyebrows and turned back to Gibbs.

"Where'd you learn?" he asked.

"She just said that the AK-47 round that killed the Commander came from the same weapon that killed our two drug dealers."

Chloe's head jerked up, impressed and pleased to hear this.

"Yeah," Tony said slowly. "Why didn't she just come out and say that?" The door opened, and Gibbs grinned.

"Hey, thank you," he said over her music.

She signed, and Chloe looked up in time to see that she had some more.

"Oh, she's got more," Gibbs translated.

Chloe turned off the music as Abby came around her computer and she said, "Please tell me it's good news."

Abby grinned and said, "I picked up GSR on the smuggler's hands. Their weapons were fired really recently. The Commander's was clean."

The computer beeped, and Chloe could see the wheels turning in Gibbs's head.

"They said Seadog didn't deal," Gibbs said, eyes narrowed.

"Seadog?" Tony asked. Abby signed that she didn't know, and Chloe and Tony followed Gibbs into the elevator. As soon as the doors shut, Tony said, "Who's Seadog?"

"Did you get that reporter's number, or was that just talk?" Gibbs asked Tony, and Chloe narrowed her eyes.

"Gibbs…." Tony said, grinning.

Chloe took a deep breath and said, "What reporter?"

"See if she's available for lunch," Gibbs said, ignoring Chloe.

"I'd love to," Tony said brightly. "Can I expense it?"

"No, but I will."

At this, the humor of Tony cottoning on was greater than her curiosity, and Tony sighed, turning to her as he said, "How do you sign, 'I should have known?'"

/-/

Gibbs put on his charm as Miss Fontaine eyed him with suspicion over the table. To give this woman credit, she was good at reading people and a situation.

"You kick me off the beach and now you play the gentleman?" she said. "You must want something real bad."

"Oh, yeah," he said, smiling. "Bubbles okay?"

"Fine," she said, eyes still narrow.

"The panini here reminds me of Naples."

"No bread. I'm on TV, remember?"

He grinned and said, "So, is it true the camera puts ten pounds on you?"

"Five in my case," she said with a self-satisfied grin. "What do you want, Agent Gibbs?"

"Jethro," he said, trying to take a leaf out of Chloe's book and make nice.

"You're kidding," she said, raising an eyebrow."

"No," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Um…to have a nice lunch, to know you a little…"

"Ah, here it comes," she said, eyes narrowed.

"…to tell you a story."

She chuckled and said, "Jethro, Commander Farrell's old news. I'm onto fresher bodies."

He was wishing he could have brought Chloe along, but it would have spoiled the illusion.

"Aren't you interested in getting it right?" he said.

"I am," she said, with sincerity. "My producer isn't. He's interested in ratings."

"At the price of a man's reputation?"

"I didn't report anything that wasn't told to me by the cops."

"You didn't dig deeper."

"I couldn't," she countered. "You threw me out."

He smiled and knew Chloe was going to kill him, but it would be worth it if he could fix it.

"What if I let you in?" he said.

/-/

Chloe rubbed her hands together as she waited for Gibbs to arrive. Fuller was showing calm on the outside as the two drug dealers were waiting in autopsy, as Chloe and Gibbs had agreed.

When the doors opened, Fuller stood straighter and said, "Special Agent Gibbs. Frank Trujillo and Darryl Wilkins as requested."

"Over here," Gibbs said, leading the way over to the drawers. Chloe slid them open, bringing out the bodies. Gibbs looked at Darryl and said, "Is that a glimmer of recognition I just saw? It seems these two belong to you."

"Good," Darryl said. "I can slide, right?"

"Not if you killed them," Gibbs said as Chloe raised an eyebrow.

"I never scuffed anyone in my life," Darryl said, amused.

"I'm the only one not finding anything funny here, you know why?" Gibbs gestured to the Commander and Chloe leaned on the unopened refrigeration units, waiting until she had to close the drawers again. "This Naval Commander didn't die a natural death or fighting for his country. He died in a cross-fire between you two dirtbags."

"I want my lawyer," Frank said.

Gibbs nodded to Chloe who passed him the counterfeit bill.

"This was found on these two boys in the cooler," he said, holding it up. "It's counterfeit. It comes from a foreign government known to support terrorism. That makes you two dirtbags suspected enemy combatants under the Patriot Act. Chloe, read them their rights and put them on the first Navy transport to Gitmo."

"You have no rights," she said coolly. "You get no lawyers. You definitely don't have a right not to speak, and should you choose to exercise it anyway, you'll find the punishment for silence…most unpleasant."

Tony grinned, giving them more stories about Gitmo, and Fuller came over to Gibbs and Chloe, clearly afraid.

"Gibbs, we don't know who counterfeited that money," Fuller hissed. "Even if it does come from a country friendly to terrorists, you can't send them to Gitmo. They're US Citizens."

"Do you understand these rights you don't have?" Tony said, grinning.

Chloe just raised an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly at Fuller as Gibbs said, "Watch me."

/-/

Gibbs was filling out some paperwork in the squad room when he got a call from autopsy, where Chloe and Fuller were with the dealers.

"Your bluff worked," Fuller said. "Trujillo wants to talk. He really believed you'd ship him off to Gitmo."

Gibbs smiled, figuring Chloe would be furious for what he was about to say, but he didn't care.

"The secret of a good bluff, Agent Fuller, is not to bluff."

/-/

Chloe licked her lips as Trujillo explained to Gibbs, "The two men on ice are brothers. Jesus and Carlos Garcia. They run two of my boats. Fishing's been poor lately because of poachers in my waters."

"Your waters?" Darryl said with a smirk. "You own the oceans, Frank?"

"So, I kept my boats in port until our little dispute…could be settled."

Chloe appreciated the carefulness of wording, but Tony grinned and said, "I could recommend a Federal mediator." Everyone looked at him with various levels of exasperation, and he quickly said, "Sorry. Couldn't resist. You were saying?"

"Yesterday, I learned that the Garcia brothers took one of my boats out Sunday night and never came back."

"Without asking you, _Jefe_?" Gibbs said.

Trujillo nodded and said, " _S_ _í_ _. Sin mi permiso._ "

Darryl chuckled and said, "You ain't ballin' no more when your marks don't ask, Frank."

" _¡_ _Callete, tonto!_ Okay?"

"You can ride out that salsa spit, okay?" Darryl said.

"You believe him, Darryl?" Chloe asked softly, her hands folded.

Darryl shook his head and said, "There's no way he would come with real in front of my grille."

"Real in front of my grille?" Tony said, gleefully. "I've got to remember that."

As he often did, Gibbs ignored Tony and said, "You know what that tells me? As far as you were concerned, that boat was Trujillo's, fishing in disputed waters."

Shaking his head, Darryl said, "I wasn't hip to this 'til this narc dragged me down. Swear on my seeds, okay, we ain't whacked them."

"He's not lying to you," Trujillo said. "He didn't kill them."

Gibbs grinned and said, "Hey, this is good, Tony. You've got two rival dirtbags vouching for each other. You think Garcia charted out Frank's boat to some sports fisherman from Iowa?"

"Would they want to do anything illegal?" Tony asked, playing along.

"No," Gibbs said. "No. They were probably hauling drug smugglers."

"Or illegal aliens," Chloe sighed.

"Or run guns. Did we miss any potential charters?"

Trujillo narrowed his eyes and said, "I've told you everything I know. Can I go now, _por favor_?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said, shrugging. "Sure. Once we have the boat." Trujillo said nothing, but his jaw twitched, and Gibbs said, "Help me out here, Darryl."

"He's got GPS locators in all his boats," Darryl said, and Gibbs nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"Now, why didn't you tell us that, Frank?"

"I like to handle my own problems," Trujillo said.

Translation: he wanted to remove his own rogues.

"Not this time," Gibbs said, his voice hard. "This one is ours."

Trujillo weighed his options and looked at every face before he turned to Gibbs and said, "May I use your phone?"

Points for grammar, Chloe thought, as Gibbs pulled out his phone and said, "Yep." Trujillo frowned at the old-fashioned phone, but Chloe knew there was no point not pressing further.

"Name of the boat, Trujillo?" she asked sweetly.

He gave her a sour look, but she knew they were on the right track.

/-/

Gibbs looked around the marina, glancing up at the boat in question. Chloe was present this time, wearing her field gear. It was the only time he didn't see her in a skirt or dress of some sort, and while it should have been less distracting, there was something about not being able to see her calves that made his eyes drift toward her calves more often than usual.

"Can Tony sniff for drugs now?" Fuller asked.

They all looked up at his crew, and there was a suited-up dog on a chain leash.

"Tony?" DiNozzo said, grinning.

"Some coincidence, huh?" Fuller said as Chloe scratched the dog named Tony behind the ears.

"The deck's been hosed," Gibbs said, "but there's blood residue. Get me some swabs, DiNozzo. I'll start in the cabin. Chloe?"

"Bet he's a real stud," they heard Tony say as they crossed to the main cabin.

"He's neutered," Fuller answered, and Chloe snorted, sharing a glance with Gibbs.

"Would we take a boat like this?" she asked as he opened the cabin door.

"No, mine's better," he said, frowning as they entered. They looked around at the walls, so obviously covered with the signs of a gun battle. Chloe pulled on a glove and touched one of the bullet holes, and Gibbs stood behind her. "And it doesn't have any of this."

She hummed, and led the way back to the deck as the engine started.

"Oh, hell!" Tony was saying, grinning. "What kind of engine is in this thing?"

"Drug runner special," Fuller said, nodding at Chloe. "A blow Five-Oh-Two putting out eight hundred horses."

"Main cabin's a mess," Gibbs said, nudging her out of his way a bit. "Blood stains. Bullet holes. Found some bloody bandages on the bunks. One of them's hurting."

"Can I search for drugs?"

"Not yet," Chloe said, tucking hair behind her ear with her ungloved hand. "We've not processed the scene yet. Check the marina office to see if they paid a mooring fee and see where that leads. Then canvas the marina for anyone who—"

"Lessing," Fuller said, amused, "I'm a Federal Agent. I know who and what to ask."

Gibbs grinned as Chloe's neck stiffened and he said, "She forgot you're not a dog walker."

"Uh, that's very funny," Fuller said, frowning. "Come on, Tony."

Gibbs watched Chloe's lips twitch as Fuller whistled, and Tony the dog barked in response as Fuller led him off. Chloe led the way back to the main cabin, Tony following, and Gibbs found his eyes glancing down to her calves again, frowning.

"Wow," Tony said as the three of them stood in the cabin. "They should have hosed down in here."

"They did just enough to avoid attracting attention of someone walking by," Gibbs said, taking the gloves Chloe passed him before she opened an evidence bag.

"We're going to be bagging and tagging for hours," Tony said darkly. Gibbs thought of the scene, how it would have played out, how the commander fit into the picture, as Chloe knelt in a corner and considered the blood splatter.

"If I only had the time," Tony said mournfully, but Chloe didn't look up.

"What are you blubbering on about?" she asked, jolting Gibbs out of his reverie.

"You got the time?" Tony asked. "My watch is slow."

"You going somewhere, DiNozzo?" Gibbs snapped, not bothering to give her a chance to answer.

Tony shrank slightly, shifting the camera.

"Yeah," he answered sharply. "Back to work."

/-/

Chloe peeled off her gloves as they checked in with Fuller, who'd returned from his canvassing.

"Nothing from the marina office," he said, "but Jenny and Nancy were very helpful."

Tony perked up at this, and Chloe bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"Jenny and Nancy?" he asked, practically rolling his ears forward with interest.

"The girls on the sloop over there," Fuller said, pointing up the way to a pair of attractive-looking girls. At least from this distance. "They're sailing that beauty all the way down the Intercoastal Waterway to Miami for her owner."

"All the way to Miami…"

Gibbs, however, raised his eyebrows and said, "They're going to be there by the time you tell me how they were helpful."

"When they docked yesterday, there was someone on this boat."

"Description?" Chloe asked.

"Late twenties," Fuller recited. Glasses. Short hair. Gay or low on testosterone. They waved. He ignored them."

"No way," Tony said, grinning.

"That's what I said."

"What did they say?" Gibbs pressed, and Chloe's lips twitched as she tried not to laugh.

"They had a couple of cell phones. When he wasn't making calls, he was working a laptop. About one, Jenny started grilling some prawns. By the way, they're Aussies."

"Aussies!" Tony said, grinning. "I love Auss – So, Jenny was grilling prawns?" He switched to a business tone at a glare from Gibbs, and Chloe trodding sharply on his foot.

"Saw a white van pull up here. The guy with glasses was really excited to see the driver. She said they hugged a lot."

"Gay," Tony said, but Gibbs ignored him again.

"They describe the driver?"

"Same look as glasses without the glasses," Fuller said. "They brought some heavy suitcases from the boat to the van. Then they helped a third guy with a bandaged leg to the van. He must have been in the cabin the whole time. Then they drove off."

"And all we have on the van is a color?" Chloe said, clicking her pen to take a few quick notes, pressing her notepad onto Tony's back.

"Nope, I tried," Fuller said with a shrug. "All they could remember was that it was white. Can Tony sniff the boat now?"

"It's all yours," Gibbs said, and Tony the dog barked.

Fuller grinned, holding up a slip of paper, and said, "It sure is."

"What's that?" Tony asked as Fuller posted the paper.

"Asset forfeiture notice."

"Don't you have to find drugs first?"

"I used to worry about rules like that," he told Tony the human. "Then I met you guys." He tugged gently on Tony the dog's collar and said, "Come on," leading him down below. "Come on. Good boy."

Chloe finished her notes, relinquishing Tony the human's back, and Tony said eagerly, "I'm telling you, boss, Aussie chicks are definitely different from American chicks. A guy's even got to approach them differently. I'd have got more than the color of the van out of them."

Gibbs glanced at Chloe, who shrugged, and then he said, "I'm going to regret this, DiNozzo. Follow up on Fuller's interview."

They watched him sprint off and Chloe shrugged back her shoulders.

"He's going to be unbearable," she said, squinting toward Tony.

"He already is," Gibbs said, glancing down at the evidence bags. "FBI?"

She hummed. She had a few guesses why their friends on the boat would be of interest to the FBI, and several gave reasons for not waving back to the Aussie girls that didn't involve being gay or short of testosterone.

And none of them stopped her stomach from turning.

/-/

Gibbs and Chloe returned to the squad room, and as they were walking in, Gibbs spotted Kate.

"Hey, get anything from your friend?" he asked.

"Yep," she said, and her nervousness alerted him something was wrong before he spotted FBI Agent Fornell sitting in the bullpen. Chloe stopped dead in her tracks

"I knew you couldn't handle this," Chloe said, clearly channeling her anger at Kate instead of whatever was really bothering her. "You disappoint me."

"Me too, Lessing," Fornell said, leaning back in Gibbs's desk. "I thought she knew better than to trade down. Oh," he said to Gibbs, who was narrowing his eyes. Fornell gestured at the desk and said, "Is this yours?"

Chloe crossed and pulled out a chair from the empty desk for Fornell, and Gibbs noted that Fornell got up at her unspoken request without a fight.

"You need to seriously re-think your definition of the word friend," Gibbs said to Kate, who gave an exasperated shrug.

"If I were in Marcy's shoes, I would have done the same thing," Kate said.

Chloe opened her mouth, no doubt to say something snarky, but Fornell spoke before she could, smirking.

"Careful, Agent Todd," he said. "You're running out of job options."

"So, I once again have the pleasure of your company, Agent Fornell," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes as Chloe sat on the empty desk, kicking her feet back and forth. "We're into more than phony Franklins and dead drug dealers."

"Much more," Fornell said, with a glance back at Chloe, who was fastidiously looking at her toes. "Those serial numbers match the batch of bogus bills passed by Nine-Eleven hijackers. Your killers aren't drug dealers, they're terrorists."

Gibbs frowned at Chloe, who seemed to be half-expecting these words, and he watched her shoulders stiffen, her breathing go shallow. She'd been dreading this, perhaps since the FBI went on hold on day one. So why didn't she say?

/-/

Fornell suggested Chloe help him set up the call in MTAC, although she wanted anything but to be alone with him in that moment. She knew he'd take advantage of the moment to grill her, to press her buttons to know if she should be assisting or not. He was looking for a reason to sideline her, and while she knew it was for her own good, she couldn't stand he wouldn't just take her word.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked as she input the call request, waiting for a response and approval.

"I'm always okay," she said smoothly. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Chloe, it's terrorists."

Her neck stiffened and she said, "You know it's completely different."

Still, even as she said the words, she could see the glass from the café shatter into the street, feel the heat, feel phantom blood on her fingertips. Just as she could feel lips on the tender spot between her shoulder blades and trembling hands brushing her hair out of the way, over her shoulder.

Her stomach churned.

"Is it?" he asked. His eyes were full of concern, and she wanted to get the approval through so this would just end. "Chloe, you shut down. How am I supposed to know what you can handle? You didn't talk to me, you didn't talk to your cousin, you didn't even really talk to the psychologist!"

She looked at the keyboard and licked her lips, but she didn't dignify his pestering with a response. She could still remember her debrief, the questions she didn't have satisfactory answers for. They knew the answers but wouldn't accept them, and she couldn't offer up lies. Why give any answer at all when they were perfectly happy to draw their own conclusions?

"Look, I know there are differences, but Stockholm Syndrome—"

Chloe's head snapped up and anger wash through her and she said, "It wasn't Stockholm Syndrome."

"Your psych eval…"

He shrugged, but she saw the approval hit through and she stood, scheduling the standby with a three-minute delay, enough time to get the others in the room.

"They wanted an easy answer for a complex problem," she said softly, shaking with anger and emotions she didn't want to try processing. "And you know full well that they'd never have written down the truth on an eval. Go get Tom and Gibbs. We've got two and a half minutes before your boss is on screen."

She knew Fornell was giving her a pitying look, but she didn't want his pity. She wanted absolution, and he couldn't give her that.

/-/

As the two directors had their verbal joust, Gibbs kept a close eye on Chloe, and he noticed Fornell was doing the same. Whatever they'd talked about while they were alone in MTAC, Gibbs had a feeling it had something to do with the reason she left the FBI, and the reason her neck seemed stick-straight and tense since seeing Fornell.

"Since Nine-Eleven," the FBI director said on the screen, "the Bureau has compiled a worldwide terrorist database incorporating files from over seventy foreign intelligence services. Any prints lifted from that boat that are left by known terrorists will get a hit."

Director Morrow said, "Why didn't we have access to this database, Charlie?"

In a silky, evasive way, the FBI director said, "All you had to do was ask, Tom."

Chloe rolled her eyes and Morrow said, "If your Agent Fornell hadn't been here to get us priority, my feeling is I'd still be asking."

"Perhaps I should leave him there."

At this, Chloe looked up, no laughter in her eyes as she said, "You don't need to go to such extremes, Charlie. All you have to do is hard-wire us in."

He narrowed his eyes at her and said, "Sorry, Chloe. We like to monitor who is accessing our data."

Gibbs felt there was something uncomfortable in the way he said that to her, and her neck became, if possible, even stiffer.

"Hard to keep a list like this to yourself, Charlie," Tom said, verbally stepping between the two. "I'm sure when our colleagues who head the other agencies hear of this, they're going to be pounding on your door."

Chloe's hand twitched as if for her phone, a motion almost certainly done for the other man's benefit, and one he certainly didn't miss as he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.

"Oh, hell, why not?" he said. "We're all on the same team. But Tom, Chloe, if any of our colleagues hear about this, I'll pull your plug and NCIS priority will follow the Sandusky, Ohio Fire Department."

"Understood," Tom said abruptly. "Thanks, Charlie." He turned to Gibbs and Chloe and said, "Good luck," on his way out of MTAC.

"I see where you cowboys get your chutzpah," Fornell said, nodding after Tom as Chloe pulled up the incoming database, cross-checking with the fingerprints scanned in from the crime screen. Photos began flicking onto the screen, and Gibbs put a hand on the back of Chloe's chair, looking over her shoulder.

"How long to scan the entire database?" he asked Fornell, but his eyes were on Chloe, who seemed to be awaiting some face to flick onto the screen at any moment.

"I don't know. No one's ever done it."

/-/

Chloe relaxed at the name and picture on the screen, pleased she hadn't seen any familiar faces before they got a hit. Fornell seemed to have backed off, as well, although she knew Gibbs would ask her questions. But he would ask later. They weren't relevant now, and one of the wonderful things about Gibbs was the way he resembled a pitbull – once he got his jaws in something, he didn't let go until he was done with it, not for anything.

"You know him?" Gibbs asked the room in general.

Kate said, "No," and Chloe shook her head, narrowing her eyes.

"His name is Saudi," Fornell said. "Same as most of the Nine-Eleven hijackers."

"The red star's new," Chloe said, gesturing to the star by the name. "What's that mean?"

"Active case with a high priority. He's one of the foreign terrorists wanted for the U.N. bombing in Baghdad. Believed to have slipped out of Iraq through Syria three weeks ago. Whereabouts unknown."

"Not anymore," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes at the screen before leading them down to the bullpen. He was likely about to start diving directions, but Tony waltzed in, announcing his presence without preamble.

"It works!" he said, grinning. "I had Jenny and Nancy grill some prawns. They don't call them shrimp in Australia. Sip a really nice chardonnay with a wonderful bouquet. I didn't drink… just sniffed," he added when Chloe smirked at him.

"What the hell is he ranting about?" Fornell asked.

"I could have told you this was a bad idea," Chloe said to Gibbs, but Tony shook his head frantically.

"No, no, no, boss!" he cried. "I had the girls do exactly what they were doing when the white panel van pulled in to job their memory. It worked! They remembered the driver was wearing a company uniform."

Chloe licked her lips as she looked at her knees, trying not to laugh.

"Water company?" Kate prompted. "Phone company?"

"Jefferson power?" Gibbs added. "Vantage Cable?"

Fornell leaned back and said, "Milkman. Breadman. Hell, that white van could be from any of a hundred different commercial, county, or state outfits."

"It's a start," Gibbs said with a shrug.

"I'm not done!" he said, pulling out a black case from his pack. "I pulled this video tape from the security camera at the Mobil station on the road out of the marina."

"Very smart," Chloe said, slipping in the table and letting him control the buttons on the screen, the black-and-white footage of the station coming up.

"Any guy could have done it," Tony said with a shrug.

This, naturally, infuriated Kate, who quipped, "Guy? Learn to shut up when you're ahead."

Ignoring them all, Gibbs said, "What time did the girls say they saw the van?"

"Ah, around thirteen hundred."

Chloe leaned back on a divider and nodded as Abby approached.

"Hey, Abbs."

Abby nodded back and looked up at the footage.

"Are we submitting to the Sundance Film Festival?"

"Best terrorist film category," Tony said, pulling it back in time further.

"Sweet. So, if anyone's interested, the only prints off the boat I did match were the druggies in the cooler."

"Not the Commander?" Gibbs prompted.

"Negatory."

"Well, we've got our terrorist," Chloe said, knowing Abby would know who it wasn't just from her posture.

Tony gave Chloe a betrayed look and said, "You didn't tell me that."

"Who could get a word in?" Kate said.

"I ran those prints through the Bureau," Abby said. "I got nada."

"You did not have access to the full database," Gibbs said, his eyes still glued to the film.

Abby turned her annoyance on Fornell, saying, "You're holding out on us. That is not nice."

"Back it up!" Chloe cried as a white van flitted past on the screen. "That was it!"

"Yep," Tony said, slowing backing up to get a better look at the van and its driver.

Gibbs nodded, "Run it back," he said, getting it pulled back further. "Jefferson Power." He squinted. "Goddamn it, can anybody read that number?"

"Eight three one," Tony said promptly, giving Chloe a look. They'd been pestering Gibbs about getting reading glasses, so far with no luck.

"They've got to be going after the power grid," Kate said.

"I found traces of C4 in the stuff you bagged on the boat," Abby offered.

"Thank god," Fornell said, sighing. "They're just going to try to blow something up." Chloe must have snorted, because he said, "We've been sweating terrorists hacking into our power grid distribution software. That could shut down half the country. C4 indicates a hard target…. A power plant, which are all under tight security. Which is about to get a hell of a lot tighter."

"Probably a Jefferson Power employee driving," Chloe said, and she could almost feel the heat from a blast, seeing the glass shattering into a busy London street, the tears in her eyes half a reaction to the blast and half from regret for what she'd done to the people who'd been so kind to her.

"I hope he is," Fornell said, not even looking at her as he dialed his phone. "We'll have him before sundown. Terrorist alert," he added into the phone. "APB on Jefferson Power Company van number eight-three-one. I want to know where it's based, who is driving it, and I want it in five minutes."

He turned to them and said, "Thanks, you've all done a terrific job."

He kissed Chloe's cheek, shocking them all, before heading for the elevator.

As they watched him go, Tony muttered, "I feel like I just kissed my sister."

"I didn't know you had a sister, Tony," Abby said, bemused.

"I don't. I'm fantasizing."

"For god's sake, stop, will you?" Chloe said, rubbing absently at her cheek. Her hands still felt slick with sweat and phantom blood. She couldn't stop thinking of London, and she wished it had been anyone but Fornell to liaise.

"Fornell's got target fixation," Gibbs said softly, and Chloe hummed her agreement, sitting on Gibb's desk, but he didn't argue.

Kate blinked.

"Come again?" she said.

"It's when a fighter pilot gets so fixed on his target that he flies right into it," Tony explained.

"Ah, like you and women?"

"That August blackout was caused by a tree falling on some powerlines, right?" Gibbs asked.

Chloe thought back and nodded.

"Yeah, that sounds right," she said slowly.

He shook his head and said, "Ah, hell, these guys don't need C4. An ax will do!"

That was a very good point, and Kate sat down, pulling up what she could find from the previous blackout to compare with what they knew about their terrorists.

"Okay," Kate said, "here's the timeline for the August fifteen blackout."

"Put it up on the plasma, Kate."

She did, and they watched the interactive timeline. Kate narrated, "It started in Eastlake, Ohio, at fourteen hundred, and by the time it reached Indian Point in Buchanon, New York, all the Northeast and most of Canada was dark."

"Pull the state's power grid up off the internet."

Chloe blinked as she saw the information from the Virginia power company.

"Oh, god," she said softly. "That's…"

"It says three key failures in Virginia could cascade until every state from here to the Rockies is dark," Tony said, astonished as Chloe felt.

"Yeah, more than says," Kate said. She was not so much astonished as outraged, and Chloe could see why, easily. "It shows how! Wait," she said, doing a few keystrokes to make three of the nodes on the screen flash. "Take down those three flashing nodes simultaneously and you take out the entire Eastern Power Grid."

Gibbs nodded and said, "All we have to do is stop them from taking out one?"

"It looks that way," Kate said, looking back at the system more carefully. "I mean, if any two fail at the same time, the slack can be picked up. There will be blackouts, but it won't cascade."

"Well, which one do we go for?" Tony asked.

"Closest one," Gibbs said, pointing to it. "Right here."

Chloe pulled out her keys and was already halfway to the elevator. No sense wasting time.

/-/

Gibbs settled into the front passenger seat with Chloe driving, and he had a brief thought that with Kate and Tony in the back, it was like a family of four going for a weekend drive.

"Tobias has moved agents to focus on the three key nodes," Chloe said, setting her phone down. "He's emailed us the driver's photo, too."

"That was fast," Gibbs said, shifting his legs. She was easily the best driver of the three, not that there was anything wrong with how Kate and Tony drove, but she managed to combine fast and smooth. He suspected her father taught her on an airfield.

Her family certainly had the clearance.

"They had the van number," Tony said.

Kate passed her Blackberry forward and said, "Here. Take a look."

Gibbs glanced, but he didn't waste time on it.

"It's an alias," he said. What's he do?"

"He's a power line inspector," Chloe said, frowning as she considered an upcoming dirt road.

He sat up straighter, knowing what she was thinking.

"Is there a node at the end of that transmission line?" Gibbs asked Kate, gesturing.

Kate checked her map and said, "Yes, about a mile west."

"Take that road!" Gibbs said, but Chloe had already turned, going through a chain link gate. Somehow the ride was still remarkably smooth.

"I suppose you didn't want me to open the gate," Tony said dryly, and Chloe sped up.

"Hell, no!" Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes, looking for a sign of the terrorists. "They don't have to blow the nodes. This guy knows where to take down three transmission towers that'll do the same thing."

"Can we be sure this line is one?" Chloe asked, although she kept her foot down, obviously not wanting to risk it.

Gibbs said, "It crosses the node, doesn't it?"

Kate was not convinced, though, and she said, "Two lines cross this node, in and out. That's four places within a mile of the node that he can blow the tower down."

"Maybe we'll get lucky."

"Nobody's that lucky."

"Hmm," Gibbs said with a small smile. "We are."

He gestured to an Arab man on a phone, with a similar van.

"We don't know yet," Chloe said as she drove closer. "He might actually be a power company employee, Gibbs."

She made a…well, cute was really the only way to describe the squeak that came out of her mouth as she ducked slightly when the man began firing at them – the man from the database.

"No, I don't think so!" he said, pulling out his gun.

Chloe braked, putting the car in park, and surprised Gibbs by pulling her own gun – something he'd never seen her do in the line of duty.

"Freeze!" he cried, raising his gun, but the man didn't follow the order. The four of them raised their guns, and he and Chloe shot at the same time. No way to tell which one brought him down, and Gibbs wasn't wanting to take bets on it as the terrorist fell.

Because he had a feeling she got the chest, he got the head.

They rushed the tower, and Gibbs cried out, "The phone's got detonators!"

Kate leaned over the laptop resting on the tower, trying to figure out how far the plan got, and whether they needed to try to diffuse it on their own.

"Looks like the other two must have the same setup," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Looks like he's got all three phones set to the same number."

"How many numbers did he dial?" Gibbs asked, pulling he wires from the C4.

"Just six," Chloe said, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist.

Tony holstered his gun and said, "One more and it's badda-bing, badda-boom."

"Lucky he wasn't phone savvy," Gibbs said, and he saw Chloe grin. She'd caught his point, and was already walking back to the car. Probably for her phone to call Fornell.

"Savvy enough to wife three phones to the same number," Kate said.

"Yeah," Gibbs clarified, his eyes following Chloe "What if he used speed-dial?"

/-/

Chloe peeled off her vest and was just unbuttoning her blouse when she heard a knock at her apartment door. She wanted to tell whoever it was to go away, but she thought it might be a worried Abby, so she called for them to come in, that it was unlocked.

"Disappointed," Tobias's voice said as the door opened, and she rolled her eyes. "Don't they teach you how to answer a door at NCIS?"

"They figured you lot taught me," she quipped, gesturing to the coffee machine. He shook his head and closed the door behind him.

"We got the C4," he said. "All of it. Gibbs tells me you're the one who bagged Shakir."

Chloe shrugged. She didn't know how Gibbs would have been able to tell. If she'd put money on it, she'd have said he got the head, she got the chest, but she wasn't stupid enough to put money on a thing like that.

"Would you have diffused it?" Tobias asked.

"If I had to," she said, sitting on the sofa, watching Tobias lean against the island. "I didn't have to."

"You might have."

"It's different, anyway," she said, "building and taking apart. I only did it the once."

"He made you practice plenty of times, I'm sure."

Chloe closed her eyes, feeling sweat on her forehead, her heart pounding in her throat as she tried to remember the best place to put the wires. It was supposed to be idiot-proof, but there was still a better and a worse way to set things up.

Shattered glass, a pulsating wave of heat….

"What do you want, Tobias?" she asked softly.

"Does he know?"

"Director Morrow knows enough," she said, standing to pour herself a glass of water. Her apartment suddenly felt several degrees warmer.

Tobias raised his eyebrows as she filled her glass and said, "Chloe, I meant Gibbs. Does he know?"

"I expect he knows what was on whatever newsletter you sent out about it," she said. She took a few long gulps of the cold liquid, but it didn't seem to cool her down. "He knows enough."

"Chloe."

"And you know too much," she said coldly. "I don't work with you, and I don't work for you. Either have some coffee and be civil or leave and let me shower and change, but make up your damn mind, alright?"

Tobias watched her for a long moment, not deciding what to do. She knew he made his mind up quickly. No, he was waiting to see if she'd break down, tell him all the things he didn't already know. Chloe wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

He left without a word, and she began peeling off her clothes as soon as the door closed behind him, leaving a trail on her way to the shower. Her body shivered, but she couldn't get rid of the sensation left by the pulsating wave of heat.

/-/

Gibbs stood at the basketball court, watching the boys playing with the lights on, and watching a cameraman pointing his camera at a familiar woman with a microphone: Diane Fontaine.

"The lights are back on tonight at Community Center courts since Navy Commander Brian Farrell, founder of Urban Lights, was cleared today of any connection to the drug war which claimed his life last Sunday. A Community Center spokesperson issued an apology and announced that a commemorative plaque will be dedicated to the memory of Seadog, as Commander Farrell was affectionately called by the young men he strived to help have a better life. This Diane Fontaine, WXEK News. Now back to you."

She lowered her mic and said to her cameraman, "Doug, I need some B-roll on the boys."

The cameraman turned his lens on the players, and Diane crossed to Gibbs.

"How was that?" she asked.

"Very nice," Gibbs said with a smile.

"I can't guarantee that my producer will air it."

"You're trying," he said with a shrug. "That's a start. Thank you, Diane."

"You're welcome, Jethro," she said, smiling at him.

If he were Tony, he'd ask her to dinner, but he was already thinking of his upcoming fishing trip, climbing into his car and trying to decide exactly what to tell Chloe to bring for gear.

/-/

Chloe rubbed her arms as she sat in the boat, taking the thermos of coffee Gibbs passed her.

"So, this is like fishing, but at night, right?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"Why are you whispering?" he hissed back, and she could see his grin in the moonlight.

"Well, isn't that part of the point?" she asked, stretching her legs and crossing them at the ankles. "The water is calmer, quieter, cooler, so the fish are more likely to bite."

"Unless you're screaming at the top of your lungs," he said, casting the lines, "you're not going to make much of a difference."

Chloe hummed, trying to get comfortable, but she felt everything she did, every shift she made, was wrong. She knew he was going to ask her about something, and she wasn't totally sure what it would be. But it couldn't be good.

Finally, when he passed her a ham sandwich, he asked, "What was Fornell asking you about in MTAC?"

She picked at a spot on her thumbnail that was trying to peel away from the rest of the nail. Chloe didn't really want to have a chat about this, not on a boat in the middle of the night with Gibbs, of all things. But he did have a right to know.

"You know my time in England was counter-terrorism," she said softly.

"IRA."

"Yeah. He just wanted to be sure I was…prepared. Mostly, I think, that I should be prepared, should I see any familiar faces as we searched the database. I didn't. We found a match first."

He hummed, and she closed her eyes, feeling hot breath on her skin, fingers tracing down her spine, another hand lifting her hair off her back and over her shoulder….

"Stockholm Syndrome must be tough to get over," he said pointedly.

A frustrated scream caught in her throat, and it took Chloe several long breaths before she said, "It wasn't Stockholm Syndrome. I don't care what my psych eval says, so don't throw it back at me. That's what they wanted to hear, so that's what they heard."

"So, what was it?"

Chloe glanced up at the moon and a shiver ran down her spine. She could still feel those fingers on her spine, even though nothing was there. She didn't give an answer, and Gibbs didn't press her for one, but she thought he could hear the silent answer seeping out from her every pore as she refused to answer.

Love.

The ultimate breaking of Rule 12, falling in love with her target. She couldn't say those words out loud, not to Gibbs, especially. She wasn't weak, she couldn't let him believe it was Stockholm Syndrome, but she couldn't stand to say the words out loud.

With Gibbs, though, the nonverbal was more powerful than words. She had a horrible feeling he already knew.

 **A/N: So, the day is saved, Fornell is pressing buttons, and Chloe's past becomes a little less hazy.**

 **ALSO: I've finished the first drabble. I'll be posting it today, and the drabble collection will be a story called Rules and Promises. Keep your eyes peeled!**

 **Review Prompt: Is Chloe wrong? Is it Stockholm Syndrome to fall in love with your captors, no matter the circumstances?**

 **Q &A: Ask me questions, I provide answers here!**

 **Cheers!**

 **C**


	4. The Curse

**A/N: Here's an update! I'll be updating the companion piece as well, hopefully today, so keep your eyes peeled for more information on Chloe's past! This update is more Nathan-centric, with Chloe off-screen, so get ready for another angle!**

 **-C**

Special Agent Nathan Wells set his coffee down and looked across to the empty desk he shared an office with. For a moment, he frowned, and then he recalled Chloe was in Canada, doing some digging for one of Pacci's cases. She should have been back three days ago, but in their line of work, nothing went by a set schedule.

He opened his email, sipped his coffee, and caught himself up on the open investigations run out of all the NCIS offices worldwide, as he did every morning.

/-/

Gibbs strolled along the back corridor, checking his watch. Chloe should have been back from Canada, but Pacci said whatever she was doing up there was bringing more questions than answers, and Gibbs hadn't needed her in a while. He was completely puzzled by this sense of irritation at her absence when she was gone for more than a few days at a time, and he was grateful she wasn't away as much as Nathan was.

"Grab your gear," he announced, walking through the bullpen, where Kate and Tony were at their desks. Tony perked up.

"My three favorite words," he said.

"Where to?" Kate asked.

Down to business, as usual. Perhaps this was the issue between Kate and Chloe – both women were business-like, sharp when it came to work, but Chloe appreciated Tony's way of enjoying the investigation. She did encourage him, which should have bothered Gibbs more than it did.

"Saint Mary's River State Park. Right here," he said.

"Maryland," Tony said.

"Good guess," Gibbs said, raising his eyebrows. "Think you can guess how to drive there?"

Tony, in his usual, too-talkative way, said, "I'd say the fastest way would be to take the Beltway to Highway Two-Thirty-Five south. Take that to Route Fifty, and then…punch it into the Nav System when we get lost."

Gibbs smiled. Tony relied on the Nav System, unlike Chloe and Nathan, who seemed to know the whole area like the back of their hands.

"What's in the park?" Kate asked.

"A deer hunter stumbled onto an aircraft drop tank – Navy markings," Gibbs said.

"We're driving to Maryland to look at a drop tank?" Tony asked.

"It's got a body inside."

"Now that's different," Tony said, excited.

Gibbs nodded and said, "Yeah, I thought so. You pick up Ducky," he said to Kate. "Tony, you gas the truck."

"You know, Gibbs, most agencies have people who do that sort of thing," Tony said.

"Mm-hmm," Gibbs said, checking his watch. "So do we."

He supposed he could have Nathan call the park rangers to liaise, as he would be easier to get ahold of than Chloe while she was in Canada. But as good as Nathan was working with Navy and NCIS, he didn't have Chloe's magic touch with all and various agencies.

For now, though, he would do.

/-/

Nathan had a lull sort of day, so he obliged Gibbs and contacted the troopers on behalf of NCIS – Chloe's job, normally, but as she was still away and no doubt quite busy…

As soon as he finished, he went down to Abby's lab to see if she'd come up with anything on Chloe's case, more out of curiosity than anything else. She was busy, of course – like a woman possessed, but he set a Caf-Pow in front of her and leaned against the counter, waiting for her attention patiently.

"Did I owe you something and forget about it?" she asked, mildly concerned.

Nathan smiled and said no, asking how things were going.

"I'm concerned about Chloe," Abby said, frowning.

Oh, they were both concerned about Chloe. The more times she crossed paths with the FBI – Fornell in particular – and the more times the word "terrorism" popped up, the more withdrawn Chloe became. When Pacci's case became embroiled with suspected IRA involvement and Nathan dropped by Chloe's flat, she snapped at him before he could pose the question.

"I'm fine," she'd said, her voice higher than usual. "It's a completely Belfast-based branch they're suspecting. Unrelated."

"Except it's IRA," he said calmly.

In all the years they'd known each other, even during their lover's quarrels and break-up fights, she'd never shrieked at him and certainly never raised a hand at him, but she did shriek that day in her apartment, and when he moved to comfort her she flailed her arms as if to strike him – only to relax when he grabbed her arms and press her face against his throat, shaking.

"I'm fine," she'd lied again.

Nathan would have recommended she not do the case, but Pacci was depending on her, and it was Canada – not England.

"He's still in prison," Nathan said calmly as Abby sipped her Caf-Pow. "I checked last night."

"Men like him don't stay locked up forever," Abby said darkly. "They didn't get him for all he was worth, anyway. But he's not the thing to worry about. It's her fear of…all of them. And her lack of fear of him. That's what we need to worry about."

That was the chilling thing: even after all this time, Nathan was certain Chloe was still in love with Jacob Fitzgerald.

/-/

Trooper Lynch – the right kind of trooper, as far as Gibbs was concerned – showed them the sight, explaining the call-out as they approached.

"Bow hunter was tracking a deer. Stumbled across the drop tank."

"He the one who opened the hatch?" Gibbs asked.

"That's right."

Gibbs looked down at what was less termed a corpse than jerky.

"Mmm," Ducky said, coming in closer.

"How did he get so…" Kate asked, gesturing at the body.

As usual, Ducky knew precisely what to say.

"I believe mummified is the adjective you were searching for," he said brightly. "Ah, the tank must have been airtight, creating a hermetic environment."

Gibbs thought of canning, and hermetically sealed jars. People didn't do enough canning anymore. He had a feeling Abby probably canned things, though. Tony took a picture of the body.

"No air," he said, almost wistfully, "no bugs, no critters."

"And more important, no bacteria."

"You got an estimated time of death, Duck?"

"Very amusing, Jethro."

Gibbs looked up at the hunter, who was still standing by, ready to give a statement.

"I thought it was a missile or a bomb of some kind until I tapped it," the hunter explained. "It sounded hollow, so I cleared some leaves away and found the hatch."

Tony took another picture, and Gibbs said, smiling, "Curiosity got the best of you?"

"Wouldn't yours?"

At this, Gibbs laughed, glancing down at the container.

"Yeah," he admitted. "You know what, it probably would have. Did you remove the flight bag?"

"Yeah."

"Touch anything else?"

"Not after I saw King Tut."

"Well, we'll need your prints…to separate them from any others we find on the tank."

More pictures as the man nodded and Gibbs turned back toward the scene, where Kate was checking the victim's kit.

"Lieutenant Commander Farnsworth," she read. "Think he's our mummy?"

"I don't know," Gibbs said. "Bag it."

Of course, it was possible, but he found that things were rarely so simple, especially in cases such as this. He checked his watch again. Still nothing from Chloe.

"I can't do anything with this gentleman until we cut him out of here," Ducky said.

"I know what this is, Boss," Tony said, suddenly, grinning like someone had made a particularly good film reference.

Usually him.

That was why Gibbs was so hesitant to point out the obvious.

"Uh…external fuel tank?" he offered, waiting for what seemed an inevitable film reference.

Mercifully, it was not.

"A three-hundred-and-seventy-gallon external fuel tank off an F-Fourteen Tomcat," Tony said eagerly. "A few were converted into camera or cargo pods. This one's a cargo pod."

Gibbs nodded, but Kate seemed genuinely surprised.

"I'm impressed," she said.

"I didn't become an NCIS agent yesterday, Kate," Tony said. "As a matter of fact, tomorrow is…"

"It'll have been two years," Gibbs said, cutting across. He still remembered like it was yesterday. Tony had come a long way in two years.

Still had a long way to go, but some people moved slowly.

"That's kind of touching, Gibbs," Tony said, "remembering the day you hired me."

"Yeah, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Duck, is it okay if I touch?"

"By all means," Ducky said.

Gibbs went closer, checking uniform for some kind of sign, and he got one

"Our sailor is a Lieutenant," he announced. "The flight bag's not his."

He was hoping that Farnsworth was someone alive. It always made things simpler.

"Can you see his dog tags?" Kate asked.

If he could only express how rarely he could use dog tags for ID…

"Nope," he said, pulling himself away. "Get a flatbed. We're going to take our Lieutenant and his pod back home with us."

At this, Kate's nostrils flared and she said, "Let me guess, you're going to suggest I ride back in the flatbed with the driver."

"It wasn't a suggestion," Gibbs said, checking his watch again. Chloe would have found this endlessly amusing. He just hoped wherever in Canada she was, something was going well for her. Canada wasn't exactly a dangerous country, but he'd heard Pacci mention an IRA terrorist cell, so anything was possible.

/-/

Almost as soon as Gibbs and his team were back from Maryland, Nathan had Gibbs at his office door, looking around the room.

"Nothing from Chloe?" he asked.

"Your paperwork's all set," Nathan said, glancing up. "Troopers are dropping all interest in the case, so you're free and clear. Let me know if you need anything else. I imagine we'll be digging up some old file."

"Chloe," Gibbs prompted, waving off Nathan's news. "Have you heard from her, Nate?"

Gibbs was worried, too, Nathan realized, frowning. And Gibbs didn't even know the half of it.

"Yeah, just a text," Nathan said, leaning back in his chair. "About ten minutes ago. Looks like she'll be there another day, anyway. But she's still planning on coming back after that."

"You thought she wasn't?" Gibbs asked. Nathan's jaw tightened, and he realized Gibbs was fishing. "Nate, what do I not know about her time in England?"

"Quite a bit, I expect," Nathan said, rubbing his hands together. "There's still a lot I don't know."

"She says it's not Stockholm Syndrome."

"I'm not an expert," Nathan said, wincing. "I couldn't say. She's probably fine. It's only Canada."

"They people who hurt her, they're in prison?"

Nathan felt his throat tighten. He'd checked again. Jacob was definitely still in prison. Tough to get answers on the rest.

"Well, not the whole cell, but the big ones were done, yeah. Look, you've got a mummy downstairs. Ask me this…when we've got a better time, alright?"

Nathan expected Gibbs to argue, to demand answers now, while Chloe was away, but the mummy was obviously important. He left without a word or even a moment's hesitation and Nathan exhaled forcefully, looking across at Chloe's desk. If only he knew what to say, or even what to think.

/-/

The sound of a saw greeted Gibbs as he entered the NCIS evidence garage, where the team and Abby were going over everything from the crime scene. They seemed to be starting with sawing the casing in half, and Ducky waited so they could retrieve the body.

"Abby," he said, "find any prints on there, besides the hunter's?"

"I pulled some partials off the inside of the hatch that weren't his," she said.

"The victim's?" Tony asked.

"I doubt it," Abby said with a shrug. "Mummies aren't generally the self-help type."

Gibbs wasn't ruling it out, though, and he said, "Run the prints through the military database."

"Got it. And there's a serial number on the underside of the tank. The paint's kind of worn off, but I can bring it up"

"Good. If that tank came off a Tomcat, somebody filed a T-F-O-A report."

Kate raised her eyebrows and prompted, "T-F-O-A?"

"Thinks falling off aircraft," Tony recited.

As usual, Kate did not believe Tony and turned to Gibbs saying, "You're kidding."

"No," Gibbs said, "that's what they're called. Squadrons kept files on those going back to biplanes."

"Alright," Abby said, backing away, indicating they could take the top off the tank. Gibbs moved forward with Tony.

"Okay, on three," he said. "One, two, and three."

They lifted away the lid, setting it aside, revealing the body and some items with it, including golf clubs.

"Oh," Abby said, excited. "Sailor on a half shell!"

"Oh, Abby, please!" Ducky said as Kate came in with the camera and began shooting the scene.

"It's not unlike the Egyptians, however," Ducky said, examining the layout. "Their mummified dead were buried along with personal treasures to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife."

He lightly lifted one of the clubs and Tony raised his eyebrows.

"Where he could squeeze in eighteen now and then," Tony quipped.

"He's not wearing shoes," Kate said, mildly distressed.

"I kick mine off when I fly."

Gibbs ignored them, lifting a small silver chain with a pen, relieved to find dog tags at the end.

"We've got an ID," he announced.

"Lieutenant Mark Schilz," Abby read off the tag.

"He's not our golfer," Kate said, setting the camera aside and reading off the bag. "This bag belongs to Lieutenant Lynch."

"Gold wedding band," Ducky said, lifting the left hand of the mummy. "Looks like Lieutenant Schilz left someone behind."

"Okay, I've got a name," Gibbs said, looking at the scene. "I've got a serial number. T-F-O-A will find the plan and squadron."

"And we'll crack the secret of the mummy's curse in no time," Abby said cheerfully.

"Abby!" Ducky said wearily.

"What?" Abby asked.

Gibbs just shook his head and thought how Chloe would have certainly laughed.

/-/

As soon as Nathan's phone rang, he snatched it up, feeling his whole body tense as he heard Chloe's voice.

"Hey, Nate, need a favor."

"Chloe, what's happening up there?"

She sighed.

"Relax," she said, perfectly calm. "I told you, it's completely unrelated. And anyway, no one could argue I'm not uniquely qualified to hand an IRA case. It's all very simple. I just don't have the right connections to cut through Canadian bureaucracy. Can you put in a call to my cousin?"

"Which one?"

"Savannah. I don't have her new number."

"Where's she based?"

"Seattle. Tell her my number, have her give me a call. She's got a friend in Vancouver who can get me the access I need."

Nathan rolled his eyes at how wide Chloe's nets were spread, but he promised he would call Savannah, the eldest of Chloe's cousins and a CGIS agent. It wouldn't take long to get a number for her, especially if he asked Mackenzie for it – Chloe's cousin in the FBI – but he had a feeling she'd called him and not Mackenzie because she didn't want it getting back to Fornell she was working an IRA-related case.

He decided to respect that and go through the usual channels. Frustrated though he was.

/-/

Back in the squad room, Kate set a file on Gibbs's desk.

"Lieutenant Schilz's service record," she announced. "He was reported missing at sea off the Eisenhower."

"Amend it," Gibbs said, not looking up. "He's no longer missing."

"The carrier was a day out of Norfolk at the end of a six-month deployment in the Med," Kate said.

"When?"

She checked the file and said, "Uh, March four, nineteen-ninety-four. He was declared a deserter thirty days later and he received a dishonorable discharge."

This had Gibbs's attention, and he finally looked up.

"Dishonorable?" he repeated.

"Lieutenant Schilz was charged in absentia with theft of government property."

"Ah…the cargo pod?"

She smiled ironically and said, "One point two million dollars out of the Eisenhower's safe. He was their Disbursing Officer."

Before Gibbs could make the obvious comment, Tony returned, talking – as usual.

"I just spent three riveting hours sorting through squadron records at the Safety Center," he announced. "Found the aircraft that dropped the pod. An F-Fourteen Tomcat."

"From a squadron on the Eisenhower?" Gibbs prompted.

"Yeah," Tony said, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Vilma-F Two-Twelve. The Red Wolves."

"Coming home from a deployment?" Kate said, smiling.

"After six months in the Med," he said, eyes narrowed, speaking more slowly. "Want me to give the names of the Tomcat crew?"

Gibbs smiled and said, "Well, it's safe to assume one of them wasn't Lieutenant Schilz."

"Why ride in a pod if you've got a seat in the cockpit?" Kate quipped.

Tony set down his bag and said, "The pilot was Lieutenant Commander Farnsworth."

"Good news, Commander," Kate said grinning. "It took ten years, but we located your luggage."

"The golf clubs belonged to his RIO, Lieutenant Lynch."

"RIO?" Kate asked.

"Radar Intercept Officer," Tony said. "Also called a GIBs. One B. Short for 'guy in back.'"

"Why do you need two B's?" Kate asked.

"Second one's for bastard," Gibbs said, dismissively. "What else, Tony?"

"V-F Two-Twelve flew off the Eisenhower for Pax River the day before she docked at Norfolk," Tony recited.

But at this, Kate snapped, "She? Tony, it's named after Dwight David Eisenhower, for God's sake!"

"Maybe she was named for Mamie," Tony said with a shrug, not missing a beat, and before Kate could come back with a snide remark, Gibbs stepped in.

"Her flight path took them over lower Maryland," he said.

"Where the Tomcat lost an external cargo pod," Tony said, nodding. "No one on the round reported being whacked on the head, so the Navy conducted a cursory search and wrote it off."

"This was in the spring of ninety-four?"

"Na-ha!" Tony laughed, grinning. "Abby estimated how long the pod's been in the ground, right?"

"Nope," Gibbs said.

"Ducky calculated the time it took Lieutenant Schilz to mummify?"

"Uh-uh."

"Okay. How do you know the date?"

"I pulled Lieutenant Schilz's service record," Kate said, gesturing to the file.

"Oh," Tony said, deflating slightly. "You took the easy way."

"Not so easy," Gibbs said, irritated. "Our mummified Lieutenant went U-A with one point two million."

Tony raised his eyebrows and Kate said, "He was the Disbursing Officer on the Eisenhower."

"Our mummy's a crook," Tony said.

"Who tried to make his getaway in a cargo pod."

"I doubt it," Gibbs said, frowning. "Air's cold and thin at thirty thousand feet. He'd know that. Where's the money? It's not in the pod or Abby would be up here screaming Lotto."

"According to his service record, it was never found," Kate said, frowning.

"Tony," Gibbs snapped, "pull our files on the investigation, since you're such an expert at looking up names."

"I wouldn't say I'm an expert," Tony said, paling.

"If he's still working for us," Gibbs said, "Get Nate involved because I want to talk to the onboard NCIS Special Agent in ninety-four."

"What if he's not with us?" Tony asked.

Gibbs began to repeat his statement, and it only took a few words in before Tony finished it with him.

"The mummy had a wedding ring," Gibbs said, turning now to Kate.

"And a wife to go with it," she said, her eyebrows darting up.

"Got her current address?"

"Not yet," Kate said, quickly turning to her computer.

/-/

"Tony," Nathan said as his door swung open, and he tried not to smile at the surprised twitch on Tony's face, customary of him being surprised someone knew something he didn't think they would know.

"Nate," Tony said, frowning. "How's Chloe?"

"Apparently just fine," Nathan said, squinting at his screen. He'd passed the message on to Savannah. All he could do was hope that he'd helped close the case, not break it wide open again. "But you didn't come all this way to ask about her. What's wrong?"

"Eh, not wrong, exactly," Tony said, opening a file. "Gibbs wants to talk to NCIS Special Agent Richard Owens. He was Agent Afloat on the Eisenhower in nineteen-ninety-four."

"He's at Pearl Harbor now," Nathan said, not bothering to glance at agent deployments. "No longer afloat. Your mummy case?"

"Yeah, he investigated the robbery onboard the ship, money never found. Our mummy was the disbursement officer."

"Alright," Nathan said, glancing at his watch. "Let me see the file. I want to read it before I go talk to Gibbs. Let's get me caught up on the case. Looks like I'm officially working it, if only for the ten minutes it'll take to video conference Owens."

"Video conference?" Tony said, like a wounded puppy. "But you said he was in Hawaii."

/-/

Gibbs frowned at the corpse as Ducky considered it.

"The deceased was a Caucasian male, twenty to twenty-five, approximately five-foot-seven. The facial bone structure indicates Nordic descent."

With a nod, Gibbs said, "Matches Lieutenant Schilz's description. Commissioned before the DNA database was initiated."

"Oh," Ducky said, turning to the corpse once more. "Well, young man, we'll have to match your smile. The Lieutenant was in remarkable condition," he said, turning to his notes, "given the precipitous fall. The jaw was broken – fractured, post-mortem, no sign of bleeding. The injury is consistent with a nine-iron, or possible a sand-wedge. Definitely one of the lofted clubs he flew with."

"Ducky, I'm not interested in what happened to him after he died."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that, Gibbs," Ducky said, with a truly child-like surprise evident on his features. "You know post mortem details could be extremely revealing. Remember that case four years ago, where the young Marine was buried in an ant hill up to his neck?"

Gibbs did remember, but it was unimportant for this particular case.

"Duck," he said, "eight years ago. How did he die?"

"Oh, it can't be eight years ago," Ducky said, frowning around at the room. "No, I know it wasn't. Four years ago, your third wife hit you over the head with a baseball bat. I distinctly remember the ant-eaten Marine on the table there when I stitched you up."

He gestured to the table, but Gibbs just shook his head, grinned, and said, "Ducky, how did our young Lieutenant die?"

Ducky hummed and said, "I think the poor fellow bled out. I made a minimal incision in the chest cavity and I came across evidence of massive internal hemorrhaging."

"From?"

"I don't know yet. But something quite small must have punctured the chest cavity. Yes, I'll need to send the poor boy for a CAT scan to get a proper look."

"It couldn't have happened when he augured in on the pod?"

"No!" Ducky said firmly. "As I told you, the fracture to the jaw was postmortem, obviously inflicted by the crash. This amount of bleeding could only occur when he was alive."

"Which means that Lieutenant Schilz was murdered and then stuffed in the pod."

"Yes," Ducky said, smiling slightly. "Yes, I suppose it does."

/-/

"Damn," Nathan sighed, setting down the file. "This is the mummy you found, then? This Schilz?"

"Ducky's looking for ways to ID other than the dog tags," Tony said, "but it seems pretty likely, doesn't it?"

Nathan rubbed his eyes. Missing money cases were bad enough, but he couldn't see how this man would have stolen the money if he was then murdered – or maybe not murdered – and stuffed in a cargo pod to be jettisoned over a park. And if he didn't steal it – or even if he somehow did – where was the money?

"Let's go talk to Gibbs," Nathan said, closing the file and grabbing his badge and gun, just in case. He never left his office on business without them, because dashing up a flight of stairs just to retrieve them was a massive waste of time.

/-/

Gibbs grabbed another coffee and returned to the squad room, hoping for something to go on. As he was walking to his desk, he heard Kate say, "Gotta be decaf."

"What?" he asked, turning to face her.

"All that coffee you drink."

He looked at his cup and raised it slightly, thinking how if Chloe were back, he would have grabbed two. She drank real coffee, introduced to it by her father, unlike so many her age.

"High test," he said.

Her eyebrows twitched, and he recalled the first time he let Chloe get him coffee, how pleasantly surprised he was to find she understood what coffee really was.

"Don't you twitch?" Kate asked.

"Nope," he said, crossing to her. "How's it coming?"

"Uh…still no address," she said, sheepish.

Gibbs frowned and said, "You know, if Lieutenant Schilz stole the money, he didn't do it alone."

"Why do you say that?" Kate asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Someone murdered him and stuffed him in the pod. Maybe an accomplice that didn't want to share the million-two."

Kate, frowning at the file, obviously trying to find the best in this man, asked, "Could he have surprised the thief in the Disbursing Office and been murdered?"

"Well, no," Gibbs said, patiently, "then someone would have to carry the body from there to the cargo pod without being seen – no easy thing to do on a ship with six thousand souls."

Her computer brought up a new thingy – a window? – and she said, "Oh, I found Lieutenant Schilz's widow. She's remarried and living in Arlington."

"Go get her," he said.

She scribbled down the address and rushed off just as Tony came in with Nathan Wells in tow. Gibbs looked up at them, nodding to Nathan.

"Was it something I said?" Tony asked.

"Not yet," Gibbs said.

"Well, it looks like we're going to have to go to Hawaii, boss."

Gibbs looked up again and frowned at Tony.

"Now it's what you said," Gibbs said, and he gave Nathan a look, prompting the young man to explain Tony's ridiculous presumption.

"Your robbery investigation was run by NCIS Special Agent Afloat, Richard Owens. He's working out of Pearl now. But as I told Tony, video conferencing is probably the way to go on this one. Did you ever meet Owens?"

"Nope," Gibbs said, not having to think too hard on it. He had a very good memory for names.

"I didn't think you would," Tony said, dismissively. "He's considerably younger than you are."

Nathan pursed his lips, to his credit, to keep from laughing, and Gibbs couldn't resist an opportunity to make Tony feel what an ass he was being.

"What would you consider considerably?" Gibbs prompted.

"The guy was young, Gibbs," Tony said. "Only twenty-eight. That makes him thirty-seven now."

"Then considerably would not be an accurate description."

Tony blinked, stunned, and Nathan lost his credit as he leaned on the empty desk and said, "Tell me, Gibbs, just how old are you?"

Of course, Nathan could easily look it up in the personnel files. He had clearance to read all the files, at his leisure. He was just being obnoxious, probably thinking he was filling Chloe's empty place.

Gibbs didn't think too long on it, but he had a brief thought he wouldn't mind telling Chloe his age, but Nathan and Tony were a different story.

"It doesn't matter how old I am," Gibbs said.

"Well," Tony said, "it does, actually, because it gives me a reference point for the word that you…"

"May I see the file?" Gibbs asked over him, holding his hand out toward Nathan, who passed him the file. It was difficult to read, but he did his best. Why they made the print so damn small…

"You know," Tony said cheerfully, "after forty, everybody's eyes…."

"The night of the robbery," Gibbs read slowly, "there was a report of a man overboard. A-aft watch spotted a life vest beacon in the carrier wake."

"You're embarrassed to tell me how old you are," Tony said, grinning.

"No, he's just working," Nathan said, earning some of his credit back. "They found his shoes. They were in a hold full of scrap life vests."

Tony nodded and said, "Yeah, the Navy presumed that he robbed the Disbursing Office, faked falling overboard, and sat tight with the cash until the carrier pulled into Norfolk."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows and said, "They based all this on finding his shoes in the hold?"

"Well, maybe the Navy read Agent Owens's notes. They are attached to the back of the file."

Gibbs turned the file over and read, "'Lieutenant Schilz must have eluded the night watch and slipped over the side without his shoes to swim ashore.'"

"Eye strain," Tony teased, and Gibbs fought the urge to head slap him. All it would do was encourage more comments later, and Chloe was on him to get reading glasses often enough.

/-/

Nathan set up the video conference and allowed Gibbs to catch Owens up on what they'd learned so far. MTAC felt cold to Nathan, and he quickly checked his phone, annoyed Chloe hadn't even texted.

"I would never have guessed he flew off the ship!" Owens said, frustrated.

"It wasn't exactly voluntary," Nathan said, slipping his phone back in his pocket and stepping forward.

"I was sure he'd swum ashore with the cash. That damn case has been the only blotch on my record for twelve years."

Calmly, Gibbs said, "Didn't do much for Lieutenant Schilz's record, either."

"He stole the money," Owens said firmly. "I'll stand by that."

"Well, if he stole it, Agent Owens, where is it?"

"Beats me, but it's not on that ship. We searched every inch of it for him, and the cash."

"The Eisenhower docked the next day. How long did you search?"

"I don't remember."

Tony recited, "Two days."

"Who searched?" Gibbs prompted.

Owens sighed and said, "Hell, the entire crew."

Nathan exchanged a look with Gibbs and softly said, "Well, how was that billed? Finders-keepers?"

Owens bristled and said, "What are you implying, Nate?"

"Nothing," Gibbs said sternly. "I'm just wondering how you managed to search every inch of a ninety-five thousand ton, twenty-four story tall, one-thousand-forty-nine-foot-long aircraft carrier in two days."

"We couldn't keep the crew any longer than that. They'd been deployed for six months. Their families were waiting dockside."

"Which means you didn't search every inch," Gibbs said, and Nathan was already mentally preparing his report for Director Morrow. "So as far as you know, that money could still be on board."

"It could be, but it isn't."

"Another assumption, Special Agent Owens?" Gibbs snapped. "Or do you know this is fact?"

Owens became very testy and said, "I don't like the tone of this. You've got my report. I have nothing more to tell you."

"Okay," Gibbs said. "We'll see. The Eisenhower is currently doing quals in the Atlantic. She'll be back in Norfolk for weekend liberty. Be there. Oh-seven hundred. Saturday."

Nathan nodded, taking out his phone to prepare the orders, even as Owens was saying, "You cannot order me back to that…that…"

Nathan gestured and the monitor clicked off.

"Where'd you get those statistics?" Tony asked Gibbs as they walked out of MTAC together.

"Read 'em."

Nathan grinned and said, "I'll get all the paperwork in order, Gibbs. I'll keep you posted. I take it you want me going to the ship?"

"Yessir," Gibbs said, and Nathan grinned.

He loved his job.

/-/

Gibbs led Tony to the evidence garage while Nathan was reporting to the director and filing their paperwork. They arrived to see welding happening, and Tony seemed very disappointed.

"You put it back together," he said.

"Yeah, I had to study the fiberglass sarcophagus in one piece," Abby said, grinning.

"What'd you find?" Gibbs asked.

"Something hinky. Okay the pod is attached to the Tomcat by an M-X-U rack with two hooks."

Tony pointed to the holes on the pod.

"It's here and here." Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Tony, who grinned and said, "Wasn't sure if you could see 'em, boss."

Gibbs mildly regretted not head-slapping him earlier and said, "Go on," to Abby.

"The hooks fit in these holes," she said. "Now, when the pilot wants to eject the pod, he flips a switch and the hooks disengage."

"The pod drops away," Tony said.

"Well, actually, it's kicked away. The forward and aft ejectors fire and kick it off the wing."

"T-F-O-A report said the pilot didn't touch the pod ejector switch," Tony said. "The pod just fell away. Is he lying?"

"No," Abby said earnestly. "If he had popped it, the ejectors would have made dents in the pod."

"No," Gibbs said, looking at the pod carefully. "No dents."

"No dents," Abby affirmed, grinning. "Just damage from plowing into Mother Earth."

"You know, when you think about it," Tony mused, "if the Lieutenant was alive, that would have been one hell of a ride." Tony made a sound that was probably meant to be the crashing, and he gestured with his hands. The other two stared at him, unmoved, and he said, "Well, it would."

Abby signed Tony was weird, and Gibbs signed back, questioning whether she was just learning now.

"You know," Tony said, tetchy, "it's not polite to talk with your hands."

"Gibbs, come look at these holes," Abby said, leading him around the pod, where he looked at the holes as requested.

"Yeah, the top of the hole's damaged," Gibbs said, examining them. "This one, too."

"To remove a pod on deck, you insert a key in the M-X-U rack and turn it. That withdraws the hooks. Now, if you turn the key only until the tips of the hooks are holding onto the pod, then…"

"It should tear loose on the cat shot and leave marks like these on the holes," Gibbs finished.

"Except the mummy's curse was working, so the tips held onto the pod until it was over Maryland."

Tony frowned and said, "Abby, there was no mummy ten years ago, so how could there be a curse?"

"It's like a chicken-and-egg thing, Tony."

Mercifully, the doors slid open, and Kate entered, hopefully with news about the wife that would be helpful.

"I interviewed Lieutenant Schilz's widow," Kate said. "They had a child, Alicia. Nine years old and she's as pretty as her mom."

"I knew I should have taken that interview," Tony sighed.

Kate raised her eyebrows and said, "She's remarried, Tony."

"Yeah?"

"He does this just to screw with me. Don't you?"

Or not.

"Do you have a report to make, Agent Todd?" Gibbs prompted.

"Mary got a phone call from her first husband the day he disappeared," Kate said eagerly. "She'd just given birth at the Bethesda Naval Hospital – he called her from the carrier."

"So?" Abby asked.

"So, it's a bit deal to call home from a ship in ninety-four," Gibbs said, nodding Kate on.

"The signal was bounced off a satellite and routed to the Comm office in Norfolk," she said.

"Did you trace the time of the call?"

"Navy doesn't get rid of anything," she said with a grin. "Comm office records show that Lieutenant Schilz called Bethesda Naval Hospital from C-V-N Sixty-Nine – that's the Eisenhower – at…zero-five-thirty-three on the fourth of March, nineteen-ninety-four, and the call lasted twelve minutes."

"Tony," Gibbs said, snapping his fingers. "What time does the shmuck's report say the disbursing office was robbed?"

"What schmuck?" Kate asked.

"Our schmuck, unfortunately."

Tony read off the file, "Between twenty-one hundred hours, March third when the office was secured and zero-seven hundred on the fourth when it was opened by the Assistant Disbursing Officer."

"It doesn't let him off the hook," Kate said, disappointed.

"Ensign Wiles," Tony continued.

"Wiles?" Kate asked, suddenly interested again. "Randy Wiles?"

"Ah, no," Tony said, grinning. "You're not getting me to bite again. You read this report…. No!" he suddenly said, gleefully. "Mrs. Schilz told you!"

"Actually, she did," Kate said, still stunned and eager.

"I knew it," Tony said, grinning, to Abby.

"Only she didn't tell me that Randy Wiles was the Assistant Disbursing Officer," Kate said. "She said he was her husband!"

Gibbs raised his eyebrows, looking down at the file, the whole case turned on its head.

/-/

Standing on the USS Eisenhower on a Saturday morning, Nathan waited for Gibbs, desperately wishing he could wring Agent Owens's neck. The man had done nothing but whine since arriving.

What was worse, Chloe was still not back from Canada, although apparently, the case was wrapped up and she was stuck there dealing with the red tape. She was in her element, unsticking red tape, but Nathan was still uneasy about her lack of prompt return.

"This is why I jumped at being stationed at Pearl," Owens said. "It's only November and I'm freezing. I hate Norfolk."

Tony and Nathan exchanged a glance. Only November, indeed.

"It could be worse, Owens," Nathan said softly. "You could be at Bremerton."

Tony smiled as Owens said, "Where the hell is he? I didn't fly standby and sit next to a toilet for twelve hours to freeze my ass off waiting."

"First Class toilet?" Tony asked, and Nathan's lips twitched as Owens glared at the pair of them. "Sorry," Tony said, although Nathan certainly wasn't.

"He's talking to me like I'm some kind of newbie," Owens continued. "Who the hell dos this Gibbs think he is, anyway? Ten years and this case is still haunting me. It's like I'm cursed."

Tony laughed and Nathan grinned, the two men sharing another glance, and this time Owens snapped.

"Our lab tech believes there's a curse," Tony said lightly. "But she's a Goth, you know. The chains and the tats and the piercings. You're so…. How old do you think Gibbs is, Nate?"

Nathan grinned and said, "Tony, I'm not stupid enough to guess."

/-/

Gibbs and Kate crossed onto the shooting range, admiring the explosion of a clay pigeon well-hit.

"Very nice," Gibbs said to the man shooting. "Very nice."

"Thanks," he said. "You here to shoot?"

"I hope not," Gibbs said, pulling out his credentials and showing them, as Kate did the same. "I'm Special Agent Gibbs, this is Special Agent Todd. NCIS. The lady inside said you're the manager. Randy Wiles."

"Formerly Ensign Randy Wiles," Kate said pointedly.

"I saw the news," Wiles said with a nod. "If you're here to talk about Mark, I told you guys all I know years ago."

"You didn't say you were going to marry his wife," Gibbs said.

That got Wiles's attention, and he said, "You talked to Mary?"

"I did," Kate said, smiling. "And funny thing, she never once mentioned marrying her husband's shipmate."

Randy looked between the two of them for a moment before saying, "She doesn't know that Mark and I served together."

Wiles led them into the pro shop, Gibbs pressing all the way.

"How could she not know?" Gibbs asked.

Randy rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and said, "We met at Mark's memorial service."

"What'd you say?" Gibbs said, grinning. "I was passing by, dug the music, and decided to drop in?"

"Something pretty close to that." Wiles winced. "I was afraid that if I told her I knew Mark, she'd ask a lot of questions. I didn't think I'd fall in love with her. And then when I did…it was too late."

" _Bounce_ ," Kate said promptly.

"Yeah," Wiles said, sighing.

" _Bounce_?" Gibbs asked.

Kate shrugged and said, "It's a film. Ben Affleck gives up his seat on a flight for a guy who needs to get home. Plane crashes. Guy dies. He looks up the widow, Gwyneth Paltrow. He means to tell her the story, but by the time they come around to it, they've fallen in love and he's afraid if he tells her, it'll ruin it."

"That's what happened to me," Randy said earnestly.

"I believe him," Kate said firmly.

Gibbs would have laughed if they weren't interrogating. Chloe would be fuming if she heard such a ridiculous story, and he had a feeling another fight between the two women would have ensued. Perhaps part of the reason they couldn't stand each other – the saw the world in very different ways.

"Of course you believe him," Gibbs said impatiently. "It's a chick flick. In a guy flick, you steal the money, you set Lieutenant Schilz up to take the fall, you murder him, and you marry his wife."

"That is sick," Wiles said, horrified.

"It sure is," Kate said, looking at Gibbs like she'd never seen him before.

"Agent Todd," Gibbs said, "you will realize after being here more than a month that there are a lot of sick people in the world. Are you one of those, Randy?"

Randy Wiles sighed and said, "This is my day job. At night, I do freelance accounting. Mary and I rent a house, Alicia goes to public school, I drive a six-year-old Saturn. Now, do you think I'd live like that if I had a million bucks?"

Gibbs grinned and said, "Yeah, you're right. You were doing better staying in the Navy."

"Navy cleared me, doesn't mean they trusted me."

"Your disbursing clerk, Petty Officer Toner," Gibbs pressed. "She left the Navy, too. They pass her over?"

Randy almost laughed and said, "Erin enlisted to catch an officer."

Now that, Gibbs thought, was a person worth considering in a case involving money.

/-/

As they searched the ship, walking through a passageway, Gibbs grilled Owens on the players, and Nathan wanted to strangle the man even more.

"Petty Officer Toner was a hottie," Owens said, grinning. "If you know what I mean."

"We're men, Owens," Nathan said, tired. "Of course we know what you mean."

"You investigate this hottie?" Gibbs asked.

Owens said, "It's in my report."

"So is the assumption that Lieutenant Schilz left his shoes onboard so he could swim ashore."

"That's not in my report!"

"No," Gibbs said, "that was in your attached notes."

Owens bristled and said, "I didn't think the Navy was going to look at my notes."

"You didn't think about anything except getting ashore."

"That's not fair, Gibbs."

"Neither is convicting a man in absentia for a sloppy investigation."

"Lieutenant Schilz was the only one who could have done it," Owens argued. "Wiles was in an all-night poker game, and Erin was already in her quarters."

Nathan raised his eyebrows and said, "And you know she was there because…?"

Owens narrowed his eyes at the insinuation and said, "That cruise was the first time females were deployed at sea. If they weren't at chow or at work, they were in female country. The Navy ran that area like it was a sorority. No men allowed."

Gibbs almost laughed and said, "I'll bet all you did was take her word. How many women got pregnant on that cruise, Special Agent Owens?"

Owens looked a bit sick as he admitted, "Quite a few, Agent."

A phone rang, and Gibbs and Nathan both checked, but it was Gibbs's. Nathan let his nostrils flare with frustration as Tony said, "I guess the house mothers weren't on top of the log book."

"Gibbs."

A voice that was Kate's could be heard, but Nathan couldn't tell what she was saying, then Gibbs said, "Well, if they were still in the Navy two years ago, we could cross them off our list of millionaire accomplices."

Kate said something else.

"Lieutenant Schilz was probably killed by an accomplice," Gibbs said.

"Tony, have you heard from Chloe today?" Nathan whispered, and Tony shook his head.

"Are you interested in clearing him, or catching the bad guys?" Gibbs demanded into the phone, and Nathan's lips twitched. Kate was well behind on the rules, especially personal involvement in a case, but she'd only been around a month, he supposed. "Did you locate Petty Officer Toner?"

Nathan supposed she had, because Gibbs hung up the phone and said, "The pilot and his RIO are dead. I don't want to hear the word 'curse' out of your mouth, DiNozzo."

"Would I say that, boss?" Tony said, faux-innocent.

Owens raised his eyebrows and said, "You said it to me."

"To be fair to Tony, Owens," Nathan said, gesturing that they continue, "you did say it first."

/-/

Lieutenant Pallini showed them into the Disbursing Office, but he shook his head, frowning as they began to take in the scene.

"The robbery is a legend on this ship," he said. "Knowing Lieutenant Schilz didn't get off with the cash is going to start a treasure hunt. Excuse me."

Gibbs nodded and said to Owens, "Bring back fond memories?"

"Not so fond," Owens said, looking around, starting with the safe. "The safe hadn't been jimmied. Ensign Wiles and Erin said nothing was missing but the cash."

"Was something going on between you and Petty Officer Toner, Agent Owens?"

"No," Owens said firmly.

"You called her a hottie," Tony offered.

Gibbs nodded and said, "You keep referring to her by her first name."

"We're not allowed to fraternize with enlisted females," Owens said. "You know that."

"You're not allowed to put assumptions in reports, either," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes.

Owens snapped and said, "You've made your point, Agent Gibbs. I blew that. But I wasn't screwing around with Erin. She had something going on with one of the airmen."

"You failed to mention it in your report," Nathan said, checking his watch.

"It didn't seem pertinent."

"Name?" Gibbs prompted.

"Martinez," Owens said. "Martinez. Petty Officer Ted Martinez."

Gibbs nodded to Tony, who went across to a computer console someone was using.

"Hi," he said brightly. "Excuse me."

"You think he's involved?" Owens asked.

"I don't know," Gibbs said. "But since it was his hottie working here, you should have looked into him."

"You're right, Sir," Owens said, and Nathan relaxed a bit. Another phone rang, and both Gibbs and Nathan checked again, but it was still Gibbs's.

"Do not 'Sir' me," Gibbs told Owens. "I work for a living." He answered his phone. "Gibbs."

Kate's voice answered, "Erin Toner is living large. Nice house. Country club membership."

Nathan said to Owens, "Run me through the safe check again."

"Do not tell me that she has a rich husband," Gibbs told Kate.

"Hit the Ohio Lottery for two mil."

"You check that out?"

"Yes. Saw the winning ticket and newspaper clippings. State lottery board's closed for the day."

Nathan nodded at something Owens said and replied, "Seems basic enough."

Gibbs was annoyed, not wanting Nathan to coddle their schmuck while he was finally starting to behave himself.

"Call in the morning," Gibbs said, hanging up before Kate could answer.

"Got him," Tony said abruptly, grinning. "Ted Martinez. Aviation Machinist's Mate, Second Class. Final discharge, June second, nineteen-ninety-four. A lot of sailors left the Navy in June of ninety-four."

The computer made a beeping noise as Tony started looking through the report for more specific information.

"Aviation Machinists' Mate," Gibbs said, frowning. "That means he was working the flight deck."

"Petty Officer Second," Owens said, nodding. "Probably a plane captain." Gibbs glanced at Nathan, who had narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, and both men then looked at Owens. "What?"

"Who would have had the ability to stuff a body into a cargo pod?" Gibbs prompted.

"Anyone on the hanger deck," Owens said slowly, looking between them.

"Who's most likely?"

"You're asking me to make an assumption, Agent Gibbs."

"You're not writing it," Nathan said, "and you're not swearing in a court of law."

Owens frowned and thought back.

"The pilot," he said. "The RIO. The plane captain."

The computer beeped again and Gibbs leaned over it.

"Don't strain your eyes, boss," Tony teased, but Gibbs ignored him, frowning at the information Tony had dug up.

"That's no coincidence."

"Don't tell me," Owens said darkly as Gibbs stood straight attain.

"Petty Officer Martinez was the plane captain on the Tomcat that dropped the pod that had Lieutenant Schilz's body in it," Gibbs announced.

Now they were getting somewhere.

/-/

Nathan met Gibbs in the elevator after Gibbs had been to meet with Ducky.

"Chloe still in Canada?" Gibbs asked.

"Said she's coming back tomorrow, but we'll see," Nathan said darkly. "Ducky?"

"Hairline fractures that caused the internal bleeding," Gibbs said, gesturing on the torso where the fractures would be. Nathan nodded.

Nathan rubbed his neck and said, "I've finished my report on Owen's incompetence, if you want to read it."

"Yeah, before I call it a night, I may as well," Gibbs said, and the two men stepped off the elevator, into the lab, where music was blaring.

"Woah," Abby said, hugging Nathan as they entered, "I should have been playing Beethoven."

"It's not Beethoven?" Gibbs teased.

"It's The Newly Dead."

"What's the orange stuff?" Gibbs asked gesturing to the fibers she was examining. It was a very, very bright orange.

"I don't know yet, but it's only off this part of the mummy's shirt."

She gestured on the shirt, and Nathan raised his eyebrows at Gibbs and said, "Like the hairline fractures."

"You went to see Ducky before you came to see me!" Abby said, horrified.

Gibbs shrugged to Nathan and said, "Is there a priority here I don't know about?"

"A girl likes to be thought of first," she said, frowning at the orange. "I don't know if it's synthetic or natural, but it's definitely a fiber. What's orange in the Navy?"

"Lifejackets," Gibbs answered automatically, and Nathan's eyes narrowed.

"Lifejackets," Nathan echoed. "That's where they found his shoes."

"I never believed he was in there with them," Gibbs said.

Abby hummed and said, "You might have to change your opinion."

Gibbs smoothly transitioned, asking, "Did you match Petty Officer Martinez's partial prints on the pod?"

"Yep," Abby chirped. "No big surprise, he was the plane captain."

"I was hoping they wouldn't match."

"What's this, then?" Nathan asked, gesturing to a print she ran separately.

She frowned and said, "One of them didn't. I scanned the ridges and cleaned the garbage out. I got six Galton details. I like ten to twelve but six is enough if you get lucky."

"Doesn't look like we got lucky," Gibbs said, gesturing to the lack of match.

"Well, I limited it to Naval personnel who served between ninety and ninety-four. Still a lot of ridges and curves."

Gibbs smiled and said, "I might be able to lower the threshold."

"How?"

Nathan grinned, knowing exactly what he was thinking.

"He can give you a name and serial number," Nathan said, leaning on the table.

Abby smiled, twitching her head in a kind of perky way that reminded Nathan of a curious puppy.

"Oh, that might help," she said eagerly.

/-/

Gibbs led the way up to the squad room, where Owens was lingering, talking to Tony. Gibbs frowned and barked, "DiNozzo!"

"Speaking of big boys," Tony muttered, and then added, "yeah, boss?"

"What are you doing here?" Gibbs asked Owens.

Owens spluttered slightly and said, "Uh…well, my flight's not 'til nine in the morning. Since I'm here, I thought that…maybe…"

He shrugged and Gibbs snapped, "You know how to do a database search?"

"Yeah," Owens said, frowning. "Yeah, I do."

"That computer," Nathan said, gesturing to the extra desk. "Find Martinez."

Owens sat, and Tony sat up straighter.

"I'm looking for Martinez, boss," he said.

"Yeah?" Gibbs said, clearly not interested. "I'm getting coffee."

Nathan shook his head, going upstairs to his own office as Gibbs went to grab the coffee, reminding himself to only grab one, as Chloe was still in Canada. He didn't know why, but he found her absence very irksome.

/-/

Nathan handed Gibbs the report, watching him read, leaning back in his chair and checking his phone.

"Still nothing from Chloe?" Gibbs asked.

"Red tape," Nathan said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm sure she's fine."

"Of course she is," Gibbs said, frowning at the report. It was a thinking frown, not disapproval, but it still made Nathan uncomfortable. "How'd you two meet?"

Nathan glanced at the picture on his desk, of him and Chloe at school, laughing and carefree. His brother had taken the picture, visiting on leave. It was the first day Nick met her, and the first time Nathan saw his brother give someone that…look. Like he'd never met someone like her.

Which, of course, he hadn't. Nathan knew full well, Chloe was one of a kind.

"We met in grad school," Nathan said. "Princeton. We were in the same MPA program. First time we had a class together, I thought she was beautiful, but when we actually had a chance to talk, I didn't stand a chance."

"Still in love with her?" Gibbs asked, not looking up from the report.

Nathan hummed, not really sure how to answer. He didn't want Gibbs giving Chloe a hard time because Nathan had lingering feelings, but if he lied, Gibbs would know.

"Not like I was," he said softly, "but…I don't know that you ever get over first love. And I lost her…slowly."

"And then she dated your brother," Gibbs said.

Nathan hummed again, glancing at the photograph. He didn't ask how Gibbs knew. With so many people running around that knew – Chloe, Abby, maybe even Tony if he'd said it while drunk – it would be a miracle if Gibbs hadn't known.

"We always had similar taste in women," Nathan said, "and she's quite a woman."

Gibbs hummed, still not looking up, but Nathan smiled a little to himself. He recognized the way Gibbs sometimes looked at Chloe, even if Gibbs didn't recognize it. She was demure at work, but she still had trousers and skirts that couldn't hide the shapeliness of her legs, and Gibbs was male just like the rest of them. But more than that, the way they would banter, the respect he showed her in letting her handle the messes he made, knowing she could handle it….

And that look, the one he'd seen his brother use when looking at her….

Gibbs might not recognize it yet, but Nathan was convinced Gibbs was slowly falling for Chloe, and he wondered what would happen, if anything, when Gibbs did realize. Perhaps Rule 12 was a strong one, or perhaps it was a rule made to be broken.

/-/

Gibbs jolted awake at his desk and saw Kate setting a cup on his desk.

"Coffee?" he muttered. He saw Nathan setting a cup on Tony's desk, and Owens still at the spare desk.

"Uh-huh," Kate said.

"Alright," Gibbs said, sitting up, "what do you got?"

Owens began to give the breakdown, and Tony jolted awake.

"We got Petty Officer Martinez was a Mexican national when he joined the Navy. He was discharged at Norfolk on June second, nineteen-ninety-four, where he had his mail forwarded to the… Plaza Hotel…"

He frowned, and Tony picked up the trail.

"The Plaza Hotel in New York where he was from June fifth 'til the twenty-second, when he flew to…"

"Manzanillo, Mexico," Owens said. "He registered at Las Brisas with a wife, no first name. Just Mister and Missus Martinez."

"They stayed at Las Brisas until the ninth of July," Tony cut in. "After that, they, uh…he, uh… I lost him."

"Yeah," Owens said, frowning at Tony, "and I found him in Guadalajara at the President Intercontinental. Stayed there for ten days and then…then I lost him, too."

Tony laughed, and Nathan bumped Owens over when Gibbs dumped the remainder of the obviously unsatisfactory coffee into the bin, and he said, "Tony, or Owens, or somebody, figure out where he was born. If he's split, he's likely to go home. Gibbs, where are you going?"

"For coffee?" Kate asked, frowning as Gibbs crossed the room.

"To the head," Gibbs called out, and he could hear Nathan laughing.

/-/

Nathan and Gibbs went to check on Abby almost as soon as Gibbs returned from the head, and as soon as the door slid open to the lab, Gibbs asked, "Still no match?"

Abby frowned and said, "Nothing good enough to take to court. But if my life depended on it, I'd say it was her right middle finger that made that. Thanks," she added as Gibbs set a Caf-Pow in front of her.

"Yeah," Gibbs said.

"Fiber?" Nathan asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Oh, I spectroed the fiber," she said, raising her hands, grinning. "It's cotton canvas dyed orange number seven, but it's not from a life preserver. They're made out of urethane coated nylon."

Nathan raised his eyebrows and turned to Gibbs, who seemed to be trying to think of something. Suddenly, he lit up.

"It's the mailbag, Abby!" he cried, kissing Abby's cheek before leading the way back to the squad room.

"Orange mail bag," Abby said as they were leaving. "Cool!"

/-/

As Gibbs and Nathan entered the squad room, Kate was saying into her phone, "Right, I understand. Are you sure?"

"Ohio Lottery?" Gibbs asked.

She nodded, and Nathan said softly, "She looks way too happy."

Gibbs hummed, and she said, "Uh-huh. Okay, thank you." She hung the phone up and said, "Erin Toner was telling the truth. August ten, ninety-four, she hit a pick six. Bought the ticket a Seven-Eleven outside of Canton, Ohio. She hit for thirty-seven thousand. She lied. She and Martinez stole that money, not Lieutenant Schilz."

"Kate," Tony said, frowning, "incriminating her doesn't exonerate Schilz. She could have played him."

"No," Kate said stubbornly. "They forced him to open the safe. They murdered him and they stuffed him in a pod."

"Unless Martinez or Toner admit Schilz had nothing to do with the robbery, there's no way to exonerate him."

"Whether he did it or not," Nathan said, leaning against a divider, frowning down at her notes.

"I'll get them to confess," Kate said, still stubborn.

Gibbs grinned and said, "How are you going to do that?"

"I don't know," she said, frowning. "Yet," she added with Tony began to smile.

"Woah!" Owens said from his corner. "Martinez was murdered in a Piedra Negras motel."

"My god!" Kate cried. "She's a black widow!"

"I don't think she was ever married," Tony said with a grin.

Nathan hummed and said, "Well, that's what we needed. Kate, go bring Erin Toner back from Pennsylvania."

"How?" Kate asked, looking between Gibbs and Nathan, puzzled. "I can't arrest her, can I?"

"No," Gibbs said, grinning. "No, she has to come voluntarily."

Kate looked flabbergasted, and Nathan wished he had a camera, because Chloe would have given fingers to see that look.

/-/

Gibbs had to hand it to Kate, she got a very reluctant Erin Toner to come down to the squad room from Pennsylvania, and she watched the virtual recreation.

"Lieutenant Schilz finished a call to his wife and newborn daughter at zero-five-forty-five," Tony said.

On the screen, the virtual Schilz left the Comm and went to the disbursing office. He clicked his heels, and Abby giggled.

"I through that little heel click to show he was really happy," she said.

"Yeah, well, not for long," Tony said grimly, narrating. "Petty Officer Martinez surprised him with a knife, ransacked the safe, and forced Lieutenant Schilz to carry the money to a Tomcat, where he murdered Lieutenant Schilz, stuffed him in a pod, and left with the money."

When the presentation finished they turned to Toner, and Nathan said, "What do you think, Miss Toner?"

"I think you could use some help from Disney," she said dismissively.

At this, Abby cried out, "Oh, hey, come on! I wasn't finished with it, yet."

Calmly, Gibbs said, "We wanted to make sure we had the right scenario first."

"That one works for me," Toner said, frowning at the screen.

"Not for me," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes, enjoying the calculating look she was giving him now. "No, Lieutenant Schilz would know that Martinez was going to kill him. He'd have resisted someplace…especially in a passageway full of sailors. Martinez had to kill him at Disbursing, but how did he move him to the pod if he was dead?"

Her neck straightened as he spoken, and she said softly, "He couldn't."

"Ah, but he could, my dear," Ducky said earnestly. "You see, I found hairline fractures on Lieutenant Schilz's pelvis and lumbar vertebrae, which Abby here matched to orange canvas fibers from Lieutenant Schilz's uniform."

Abby helped Ducky finish the last sentence.

"Now, we saw an orange mail bag while we were on the ship," Nathan said calmly. "It was being dragged over knee-knockers."

Gibbs's computer beeped and Toner's eyes dashed to it, seeing a fingerprint search match, but Gibbs just smiled and said, "Ah, I'll get back to that in a minute. Where were we?"

"Dragging an orange mail bag over knee-knockers, boss," Tony said in his hardest, coldest voice.

"Ah, yeah, that bothered me," Gibbs said, still calm. "If Martinez did stuff his body in a mail sack, and dragged it across the ship, how come nobody noticed anything that was, ah…"

"Hinky?" Abby offered.

"Yeah, hinky," Gibbs said, nodding.

Owens, who was standing to the side, and said, "And that's when I remembered how you used to turn heads when you walked by."

"I'm out of here," Toner said coldly, but Kate blocked her path, grabbing her arm.

"Sorry, sunshine," Nathan said coolly.

"Not 'til the show's over," she said, gesturing back toward the screen, where Abby's second version played out.

"Now, who would have noticed a sailor dragging a mail bag over knee-knockers with you walking by?" Gibbs asked, frowning at Toner.

Abby, stiff because of the insult to her work, said, "How's that animation?"

Still a relatively cool customer, Toner said, "Much better. However, it's not evidence. You touch me again," she added to Kate, "and I will have you arrested for assault, and the rest of you for unlawful detainment."

"You're free to go," Gibbs said, and she was about to leave when he piped up again. "Oh, I said I'd get back with that fingerprint," he said, and she paused. "It's yours."

"Oh," she said with a false-cheery, aggressive tone. "Okay, it's mine. Where'd you find it? On Mark's uniform? All that proves is that we got it on."

"No, not on his uniform," Nathan said, smiling. "Not my specialty, but the Federales sent it our way. It was on a pistol that killed Petty Officer Martinez in Piedro Negras. This was, oh, two days before you hit your thirty-seven-thousand-dollar lotto."

Was it Gibbs's imagination, or did she go pale?

"Now, we could extradite you," Tony said, still hard as nails. "Mexican courts really don't like it when gringos kill one of their own."

Gibbs took a step forward and said, "I don't know if it was you or Martinez who killed Lieutenant Schilz. You can tell it any way you want. We'll take it down."

Erin Toner stared at him for a long moment before she crumbled.

/-/

They walked Owens to the elevator when he'd booked another flight, and Owens pressed the button.

"You know," he said brightly, "in Hawaii, it takes forever to get anything from the Federales."

"Same way here," Tony said, shrugging and grinning.

Owens blinked at Tony, then looked between the others before he said, "No, no, no, guys. Don't tell me that…that fingerprint match was faked? Okay, you guys are crazy."

"Yep," Gibbs said the doors closed around Owens, only to open again a minute later, Chloe bursting out of them, furious.

"You guys had a mummy case and I _missed it_?" she squealed. "This is completely unfair! All I did in Canada was shuffle paperwork!"

Gibbs laughed as Abby hurried over to hug Chloe, already eagerly telling her of everything she'd missed.

 **A/N: So, there's our first sans-Chloe chapter, Nathan believes Gibbs is falling for Chloe, and the Curse of the Mummy is abated all while Chloe is in Canada!**

 **Review Prompt: How do we feel about Nathan so far?**

 **Q &A:**

 **Q: Isn't that [falling in love with a captor] the definition of Stockholm Syndrome? (aimeelulu)**

 **A: Great question. So, the official definition specifies and emotional attachment to a captor that is formed by a combination of stress, dependence, and the need to survive. You'll see more as we go forward, but while Chloe did form an emotional attachment, it doesn't quite line up with the Stockholm Syndrome definition. For one, she falls in love while undercover, before she's captured (think Jeanne and Tony), and while she does undergo eventual stress and dependence, she never has a reason to fear for her survival.**

 **In fact, minor spoiler, it's arguable that she is never truly held captive at all whilst in England. It's far more complicated, and when we meet a certain CIA agent who knows more about her past than anyone but her, you'll start to see that it's a very complicated situation.**

 **Cheers!**

 **C**


	5. High Seas

**A/N: This chapter is dedicated to new reader,** _ **Adaya Black**_ **, whose interest in this story has prompted me to begin drafting this chapter earlier than I'd planned. On a side note, whenever I see someone – not just on FF but also other places online – someone who lists their surname as Black or Potter or Granger, I wonder if it's their real surname or just a Harry Potter fan. I mean, the Weasley/Malfoy thing is easy, but…. Is this just me? Do other people do this, too?**

 **-C**

Gibbs was putting a bit of work in on his boat when his phone rang. He checked his watch, ignoring the phone and continuing his work. His answering machine said, "Gibbs. Talk," and the beep sounded.

A familiar voice began to leave a message.

"Gibbs, Stan Burley. Put down whatever the hell you're doing with that stupid boat and pick up! I'm working a case on the Enterprise. I sure could use some help on this one. Really could use your help, boss."

With a sigh, Gibbs dropped his tools and picked up the phone.

"Okay, you got my interest," Gibbs said sharply. "What's going on, Stan?"

Stan Burley was Tony before Tony came to NCIS, a good agent, but one who chaffed with time under Gibbs. He opted to go afloat instead of waiting for a team to open for him to run.

"Two days ago," Stan said, "an Arresting Gear Operator went wacko on Liberty in Roda. His crewmates found him naked in a restaurant freezer. His body temperature was one-oh-six."

"What kind of drugs?" Gibbs asked.

"Well, I'm thinking amphetamines. Still waiting for the tox report."

Gibbs checked his watch. Nathan was probably sleeping, but he always answered his phone, so maybe he was a light sleeper.

"Well, to trigger the seizure you're describing," Gibbs said, "chances are he's a chronic drug user."

"You'd think. Only his last random piss test was negative. That was less than three weeks ago. I'm in a squeeze, Gibbs. I don't have enough time to work on this one by myself."

Gibbs licked his lips, and decided to give Nathan a call.

/-/

Nathan woke to the sound of his phone ringing, rubbing his eyes and clearing his throat before answering. Usually, if his phone woke him, it was work.

Sure enough, Gibbs's voice answered his weary telephone greeting, the question of a hello.

"Stan Burley just called me."

"Burley," Nathan said, rubbing his eyes again. "Agent Afloat, Enterprise."

"That's the one. He's got a weird drug case and he wants extra hands. What d'you say we fly out to meet the ship, give him a hand?"

"We?" Nathan said, smiling weakly. "I understand that might include your team. Does that include me?"

"I'm not allowed to fly out there without you unless you're already working a case. You already working a case, Wells?"

"Nah, Chloe's all over the Pacci case. Poor guy's tangled up with the CIA again. She hates the CIA. He's going to owe her so much alcohol when this is over."

"Are you approving it or not?"

Nathan checked his watch and said, "I'll start the paperwork now and meet you in the office at a more civil time."

Before Gibbs could argue this wasn't good enough, he rolled over and hung up the phone.

/-/

Gibbs approached the squad room, hearing Kate ask, "How long did Burley work here?"

"Five years," Abby's voice answered.

"Five years with Gibbs?" Tony asked, sounding stunned. "Amazing the guy didn't end up in a straightjacket."

"What was that?" Gibbs asked, pausing at the sight of Chloe and Nathan having a quiet conversation in the corner.

"Oh, nothing, boss," Tony said quickly, trying to cover as Chloe nodded and left the squad room, heading upstairs without a word. She was wearing a demure skirt today, but he could still see her knees, and somehow that seemed worse than a short skirt. "Just praising your communication skills."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Nathan, who crossed to join the group, not mentioning whatever he'd been discussing with Chloe.

"It'll be good to see Stan," he said, rubbing his temple.

"Listen," Ducky said, holding out a ball to Kate, "when you see Agent Burley, would one of you mind giving him this?"

"No problem," Kate said, taking the small red ball, giving it a puzzled smile.

"Cricket ball," Ducky explained. "He was not only an amazing agent, he was also an incredible athlete. And cricket was one of the few games he wasn't an expert in."

An irritable Tony said, "Ah, shame."

"Yeah, I think he'll get a kick out of it."

"He ought to," Nathan said, grinning. "Stan's got a great sense of humor. Abby, I'll send him your love, as well."

Gibbs suddenly felt a strange, negative rush at the thought Chloe might have been softly telling Nathan to pass on her love to Stan Burley. Did she even know Stan? She had a lot of Navy and Marine contacts, so it was possible, but….

He pushed the thought aside and said, "Okay. The COD's waiting for us."

/-/

As they approached the COD, Nathan stretched his arms and breathed in the cool morning air as Tony told Kate, "Just accept the fact that you're going to get lost."

She narrowed her eyes and said, "Why do you assume I'm going to?"

"Because everyone does. A carrier is a big and confusing place first time on board."

Kate didn't seem to believe him, but she said, "Duly noted."

"The numbers are stenciled on the bulkheads," Gibbs said. "First one tells you the deck level. They're called bull's-eyes."

"First number," Nathan said, almost a question as he grinned. Chloe would have loved this.

"Deck level," Kate said with a nod.

"The second one's the frame number," Gibbs continued. "Third tells you the compartment's position in relation to the ship's centerline. The last letter tells you what the space is used for."

Tony grinned said, "Crossing from port to starboard or starboard to port isn't as simple as going straight across."

"Sometimes you've got to go up one deck and down another."

"Or down one deck and up another."

"Sometimes, it takes two or three decks in the various directions," Nathan said, watching her eyes widening.

"It's frustrating," Tony said, still grinning, without a hint of frustration.

Gibbs nodded and said, "Not to mention confusing. But you'll get the hang of it."

"After you get lost a few times."

Nathan laughed, motioning for her to get into the COD first.

/-/

Gibbs glanced across to Kate as the COD came in for a landing, and she looked a bit nauseous.

"You okay?" he asked her. She nodded slightly. "Good. Just so you know, this isn't like landing in a seven-forty-seven."

She gave him a weak, almost-wry smile and said, "I sort of assumed."

Nathan leaned in a bit and said, "It's a bit of a knock-down, going from one-twenty knots to zero in about a second. See if you can breathe…"

He broke off as the COD landed, and Gibbs grinned, finishing, "Breathe normally."

Kate exhaled with a loud, nervous, "Whew," and they began to disembark.

/-/

Once introductions were made, as far as Gibbs introductions went, Stan led them into the ship, down a corridor, and Gibbs asked, "Tox report come back yet, Stan?"

"Just like we thought," Stan said darkly. "Traces of meth in the bloodstream."

"But his urine was negative just twenty-seven days ago?"

"According to the Urinalysis Coordinator, clean as a whistle."

Tony piped in and said, "Where's this Petty Officer Wilkes, now?"

"Still in sick bay. You the one at my desk now?"

Nathan grinned and said, "Yeah, that's Tony. Did Gibbs tell you all about him?"

Stan grinned and said, "Actually, no. Abby mentioned it in passing. Just assigned?"

"Two years," Tony said, paling.

"Really? Huh."

Nathan tried not to laugh as they continued down the passage, toward Burley's office.

"You said he was an Arresting Gear Operator?" Gibbs asked sharply.

"Yes, boss."

"The same crewmen with him in rota work the flight deck here?"

Stan nodded and said, "All of them are on Chief Petty Officer Reyes's crew."

"Anyone else suspected of using, Stan?"

"Not so far."

"Good," Gibbs said as they crossed into Stan's office.

"Kate," Nathan said, "you should interview the buddies he had with him the night of the incident."

She nodded, and Stan said, "Petty Officers Niles and Shrewe. They berth on deck five, designator five-fifty-six-two-L."

Nathan grinned, about to give her directions, when she said stubbornly, "I'll be fine. Oh, and this is for you from Ducky."

She tossed him the cricket ball, and Stan grinned.

"If Wilkes was tweaking, Reyes would have noticed," Tony said, narrowing his eyes, standing a bit straighter, obviously trying to prove he was worth mentioning to Gibbs, who was looking around the office.

"I didn't get much out of Reyes in my interview," Stan said, shrugging. "You're welcome to try."

"You're looking good, Stan," Gibbs said as Nathan sat on Stan's desk.

"I appreciate you coming, boss."

Gibbs turned to Tony, who was still standing, watching them, and he asked sharply, "You waiting on something?"

"Oh, no," Tony said eagerly. "I'm gone."

Gibbs shook his head when Tony left and Nathan grinned and said, "We ought to see Wilkes in action. Got deck tapes of his flight ops?"

Stan laughed and said, "Only about a hundred hours."

"Is that all?" Gibbs said with false lament.

/-/

"That's impossible," Wilkes said eagerly to Gibbs, in sick bay, while Nathan and Gibbs were waiting for the flight tape to be pulled up. "I don't use drugs."

"Your blood test says otherwise," Gibbs said calmly.

"Then it must be a false positive."

Gibbs glanced to Nathan, then back to Wilkes, narrowing his eyes.

"Before you joined up," he said, "you were an emergency medical tech. You tell me how often that usually happens. Maybe it's just a whim," he pressed when Wilkes paled. "Or maybe you like hanging out in walk-in freezers in your birthday suit."

"I don't know what happened, Sir," Wilkes said urgently. "I was feeling light-headed and hot. Really hot."

"Well, your body temperature was a hundred and six. That's high enough to kill most men, unless their cardiovascular system was being boosted by some sort of synthetic stimulant."

He shook his head and told Gibbs, "Somebody must have slipped something into my drink."

"Any idea who that someone might have been?"

"No, Sir."

Gibbs glanced at Nathan, and Nathan nodded, snapping, "Do you know who gave you the meth?"

"No, Sir!" Wilkes said, nostrils flaring.

Now Gibbs was getting angry, and he said, "You know what, I'm trying to help you out here, Petty Officer. If you try to float this story at your court martial hearing, they will laugh your ass all the way to Leavenworth. Where did you get it? Shrewe?"

"No!"

"From Niles?"

"I don't do drugs! And no one else on my crew does, either!"

Nathan sighed, and Gibbs could feel the younger man's frustration. But the problem was, Wilkes really did seem to believe what he was saying.

/-/

Nathan and Gibbs were called to the Bridge to discuss the situation the ship was in, and why Stan was under such pressure to close it out. Gibbs had learned they were resuming flight ops, and so Nathan asked for reasoning, and they were now getting it, from the highest quarter.

"We're being temporarily rerouted to assist in a search and rescue," Arbring said with a smile. "A private yacht has gone missing. We are closest to the area so the Coast Guard has requested our help. It's a shame, really. So close to home, and these men now have to turn around and go back."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes and said, "That's why you're resuming flight ops."

"If there's a drug problem, I need it stopped. I need to know who it is and why testing procedures haven't picked it up."

"We'll do the best we can, Skipper," Gibbs said.

"I'm sure you will. Lives depend on it."

On the way off the Bridge, Nathan said, "Well, that was…unfortunate."

"We'll get it," Gibbs said, frowning. "Question is, what's going to happen before we can?"

/-/

In trying to run another flight ops, Shrewe was taken to sick bay, where they gathered to get the information on his condition. The Corpsman in charge was reluctant to give details.

"You don't know for certain," he said, "but I don't think he's in any real danger now. I've got him pretty heavily sedated."

"And you would call it what?" Nathan asked.

"I really won't know until the tox report comes through."

Gibbs felt irritated, and he said, "I appreciate that, Doc, but I don't have time to wait for a tox report. In your considerable experience, what's your best guess?"

"It looks like the same situation we have with Petty Officer Wilkes," the Corpsman said with a frown.

"Methamphetamines?" Kate prompted.

"Most likely."

"Chronic, long term use?" Gibbs asked.

"With his symptoms, it would have to be."

Tony frowned and said, "Yet his last random piss test was negative, just like Petty Officer Wilkes."

"Well, it doesn't make much sense."

"No, it doesn't," Gibbs said, rubbing his neck. "When can I talk with him?"

The Corpsman frowned and said, "Well, that's hard for me to say, Agent Gibbs."

Nathan got the hint from Gibbs and snapped, "Well, it's about to get easier. You'll have him ready at fifteen hundred and the agents will speak with him then. And you'll have him conscious."

The corpsman didn't seem comfortable, but he nodded, and Gibbs tried not to grin. Nathan had grown bolder and bolder since Chloe Lessing started working at NCIS, and Gibbs thought the change in him was positive, productive, a lot more useful to Gibbs than Nathan had been before.

He just wished he didn't have a tiny voice in the back of his head telling him Rule 12 was in jeopardy every time he thought about how Chloe and Nathan had a past. But he set it aside for now, focusing on the puzzle on their hands.

/-/

They walked through the hanger bay and Gibbs gave instructions for how to proceed with this new development.

"Toss Shrewe's rack," he said to Tony, and Tony nodded.

"Got it," he said.

"Go over everything," Gibbs insisted, "and I mean everything. Above his mattress, below his mattress, inside his mattress. If there's such a thing as a fourth mattress dimension, go over that, too. Find out where the Urinalysis Coordinator likes to let it all hang out," he said, now turning his attention to Kate.

"Okay," she said.

"I want to find out about this testing procedure. How it all works. See if there's any way that anyone can beat it. You and me and Nate, we're gonna have a flight deck film festival. See if you can arrange some place we can watch those tapes."

Stan nodded and said, "I have one of the ready rooms on hold, boss."

"Way to anticipate," Nathan said, grinning. "Always a strength of yours."

/-/

As they watched the tape, Stan asked, "Got ants in his pants?"

Gibbs narrowed his eyes and said, "Question is, who's putting them there?"

"Rota was our last liberty port after we left the Gulf," Stan said, shrugging.

Gibbs checked the date stamp and said, "This tape was done before they hit Rota."

"Well, maybe he stocked up at Naples or Nice."

"Is that the best you can do, Stan, after working under me five years?"

Nathan smirked over his coffee as Stan grinned and said, "Well, at least I don't taint evidence when I bag and tag."

Gibbs smiled, recalling the incident in question, and he said, "I tripped. One time."

Nathan's eyebrows shot up as Stan said, "As I remember, it was because your eyes were glued to some little—"

"Do you mind if we get back to tape now?" Gibbs said, shortly, surprised to find instead of recalling the woman he'd been looking at, at the time, he thought of watching Chloe go up the steps in headquarters that morning, the strength of her legs, the shape of her knees….

"Sure, boss," Stan said, although his voice went tight.

Nathan said, "I do hope you both remember we have a job to do, and not an easy one."

Gibbs brushed it off and glanced at Stan, whose eyes had darkened, and he said, "I do, boss."

"Good," Gibbs said, taking deep breaths as he settled in, trying to redirect his mind. It was surprisingly difficult, he found, when the picture of Chloe's knees was somehow placed in his head.

/-/

At fifteen hundred, as Nathan had demanded, Shrewe was alert and ready for questioning. Nathan watched as Gibbs began laying into him.

"This is the second time I have had to come down here and talk to a member of your crew," he told Shrewe, who didn't seem overly concerned.

"I don't know what to tell you, sir."

Nathan saw Gibbs's face harden as he said, "Why don't you tell me how two members of the same crew who work the same team flip out on meth within a few days of each other?"

"Meth?" Shrewe said, his full nervous attention on the questioning now. Nathan leaned against the wall, disturbed as always by the cool metal touching his arm.

"Yeah," Gibbs said, frowning. "It's a fine white powder cooked up in trailer parks. Makes people do funny things, like freak out on a flight deck with a plane on final approach."

Shrewe was horrified, and he said, "Sir, there's gotta be a mistake. I've never done drugs."

"Never?" Gibbs pressed.

"Not once in all my life, Sir. It's against my morals. I feel the same way about alcohol and tobacco."

Nathan thought the boy was fairly believable, but he'd met a few good liars, so he played along on the questioning and said, "You don't say."

"Yes, sir," Shrewe said, looking between the two men, now, which sometimes made stories crumble, but he was sticking to it firmly. "I even reported a guy for smoking some pot on my last cruise."

Gibbs was amused as he said, "Well, it makes a nice story to cover your own ass in case they catch you with the real deal."

"I'm telling the truth, sir," Shrewe said urgently.

Suddenly, though, chaos happened in the sickbay, as Wilkes's monitor began a solid beep tone, and the staff shouted about code blue. Nathan and Gibbs stayed out of the way as the swarm of medical people tried their shock therapy to restart the heart, cranking it up, until the doctor finally gave up.

Nathan and Gibbs shared a glance, and Nathan knew they were thinking the same thing. They were getting too close, and so Wilkes had to go. But close to what?

/-/

Gibbs looked around the flight deck, letting the voice on the PA finish before he said, "Wilkes was killed, probably because he was going to give up the supplier."

"Makes sense," Tony said.

Kate sighed and said, "Yeah, well, what makes no sense is that these boys are involved at all. Now, Wilkes was a proud Navy legacy, and Shrewe was a Boy Scout."

Gibbs hummed and said, "That's what they want you to think. Drug addicts learn the art of the con fast."

"Kate," Nathan said, "I got the call you had put through to me. The lab is sending those urine samples to Abby. We'll have them retested."

"Good," Gibbs said, frowning at Nathan, who seemed thoughtful. Too thoughtful.

"Where's Burnley?" Tony asked, looking around at all of them as though Stan were about to pop out from behind one of them.

"Watching more flight deck footage," Gibbs said.

"Still?"

"Yeah, he's been at it almost eighteen hours now. He's always been this way. I'll see how he's doing. Nate, we'll be there when you're ready to check in."

Nathan hummed and followed Gibbs anyway, and Gibbs ignored Nathan as he said Tony was feeling insecure.

Gibbs knew Tony felt insecure. That wasn't the point. If Tony needed a kick up the ass to get better at his job, this would do the trick as well as anything.

/-/

Gibbs and Nathan grabbed breakfast on their way down, Nathan having a breakfast burrito, Gibbs ordering a couple of bagels. Nathan thought of Chloe, who was so particular about her breakfasts. She'd been the hardest girlfriend to please the morning after. Nathan had half a mind to tell Gibbs exactly how Chloe liked her breakfasts, but he figured saying it out the blue, when Gibbs may not have realized how he felt about her, was probably not the best choice, so he kept his mouth closed as they entered the ready room again.

"We're back," Nathan announced, "and bearing breakfast."

"You remembered!" Burley said with a grin, before reciting his bagel order. "Bacon, sausage, eggs, onion, cream cheese, and jalapenos."

"You want to fill me in here?" Gibbs said, nodding to the monitor.

"This is interesting," Stan said, nodding to the monitor before starting a clip.

They all stared at the monitor, and Nathan saw the Chief Petty Officer giving their suspects some little bottles, which was highly suspect as far as Nathan was concerned. Whatever it was, it didn't look like Navy issue.

"What is Chief Petty Officer Reyes handing them?" Gibbs asked.

"It's hard to tell from this distance," Stan said, trying to zoom in.

"Can you get closer?"

Stan shook his head and said, "We'll have to enhance the tape."

Nate nodded to Gibbs who said, "Uplink the footage to Abby. First find DiNozzo and Kate. Have them check out the Air Boss's take on Reyes. You have a glob on your shirt there, Stan."

Nathan tried not to grin as he walked out of the room to find the others.

/-/

Ducky called in and Gibbs waited patiently as Gerald and Ducky showed the sequence of Wilkes's death.

"Well, here is Petty Officer Wilkes with an IV drip going into his arm," Ducky said, with Gerald playing the part of Wilkes. "Please, Gerald, this is not dinner theater. Suppose someone disconnected his IV tube at both ends," he said, doing so, "and blue all the liquid out of the tube, leaving nothing but air. Suppose they emptied the saline bag halfway…that should be about it. The IV tube is attached. This blue balloon taped to Gerald's arm represents his vein." Gibbs nodded. "And the valve is inserted into the bag. Air is blown into the tub using this one way valve. The air is trapped. When I open the flow rate valve, and squeeze, air is pushed down the tube and into the vein, and death occurs…oh, within sixty seconds."

The balloon erupted, the saline solution pouring into a bowl on site. Gerald pretended to die, and Gibbs imagined Ducky rolled his eyes.

"I do apologize," he said with a sigh.

"That's how Wilkes died?" Nathan asked, wincing.

"I'm pretty certain."

"Any way the air could have gotten into the line accidentally?" Kate asked.

Ducky shook his head and said, "Normal air is less than one percent carbon dioxide. The gas bubble in Wilkes's heart was six percent C-O-Two."

"And would someone with medical knowledge have to be the one who did this, Ducky?" Nathan asked, rubbing his wrists.

"Most certainly," Gerald said, and Ducky snapped.

"You're supposed to be dead," he told Gerald, and Gibbs smiled.

"I'll see what I can find," Kate said.

"Nate and I will have Burley meet us in Sickbay," Gibbs said, gesturing for Nathan to follow him. As the three of them were leaving the room, Tony called after them.

"Burley's probably got his hands full uplinking the tapes. If you want, I'd be happy to…!"

/-/

Burley took his time arriving, so Gibbs and Nathan started the interrogation of Milano without him, and Milano was saying all the usual things, and emphatically.

"I had no reason to kill Petty Officer Wilkes, Sir," Milano said emphatically.

"Not unless you were supplying him methamphetamines and you were afraid he would talk," Gibbs said, unimpressed.

"I wasn't," Milano insisted.

Nathan shrugged and said, "Well, we certainly had your prints on the saline bag."

Milano's nostrils flared and he said, "Sir, I was the attending corpsman. My prints are supposed to be on that bag. Petty Officer Wilkes was alive when I went to change that bag out. When I came back he was dead. That's truth, sir. Give me a polygraph, anything! But that is the truth."

Nathan and Gibbs exchanged a glance and Nathan decided it was more than plausible. But who else was there?

/-/

When they walked into the waiting area, Burley was entering, and Gibbs thought Nathan might have shrunk slightly, as though trying to disappear into the furniture as Gibbs asked Stan, "Where have you been?"

"Waiting for a print match," Stan said, as though this took precedence somehow.

"You were supposed to meet us here, Stan."

"I thought this was more important."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of what's more important?" Gibbs prompted.

Stan's jaw tightened and his shoulders stiffened, and he said, "Yes, boss."

"I mean, that's why you called me, right?"

Stan's nostril's flared and he said, "Gee, it's funny how it's all starting to come back to me, now."

Nathan frowned and said, "What's wrong."

"The tightness in my chest," Stan said, attention still on Gibbs, "the upset stomach. All the pleasantries that come with working for you."

Gibbs frowned, looking Stan over. A handful of panic attacks had caused him to lose interest in working with Stan – he couldn't cut the pressure of Gibbs's team, there were plenty of other postings, and Tom found him one – but this wasn't it.

"Your breathing's not labored," Gibbs said softy. "You're fine. What have you got?"

"There were a second set of prints on the saline bag."

"Wilkes."

"You knew he used to be an EMT," Stan said, nodding.

"You think he killed himself?"

Stan raised his eyebrows and said, "One of the doctors bent a few rules, let Wilkes take a call from his father. His very proud…retired Chief Petty Officer father."

Gibbs sighed, wanting to wring the neck of the doctor who made that call.

/-/

Nathan, Kate, and Tony got a video call from Abby, who was showing the results from the urinalysis re-test.

"So, Wilkes's urine was clean," Abby said. "No nasty metabolites, no additives. There's just one tiny problem. Look at this." She held up the results charts of the two men who'd been in sickbay, and Nathan spotted the problem immediately. "It's the exact same urine as Petty Officer Shrewe."

Nathan sighed and said, "So, somebody's been swapping out the samples."

"The Urinalysis Coordinator?" Tony asked, narrowing his eyes.

Kate shrugged and said, "Maybe. Or maybe one of the twenty-five Master-at-Arms he uses to monitor."

The men both hummed and Tony said, "We need to look at the records of all the people on pee patrol."

"So, is anybody happy about this?" Abby asked, smiling. "Is anybody freaked out? It would be nice to have somebody here."

"We're a little preoccupied here, Abby," Nathan said, waving the other two off to get started.

"What do you want me to do with all this pee?" Abby asked, waving her arms at the mass of samples.

Nathan grinned, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and told her to log it in evidence until someone asked for it back. Should be fun for somebody.

/-/

When Nathan came back, Gibbs and Stan were just starting a video conference with Abby, looking at the little pill the Petty Officers had been given by their Chief. Gibbs nodded as he slid into a chair, and Abby was working on enhancing it.

"I was able to bring it way up," she said eagerly. "Take a look at this."

"Much better," Stan said, grinning.

"Right there!" Gibbs said happily. "Abby, can you get us in closer?"

"Patience, Gibbs," she said in her way. "You can't rush art." She worked on zooming in and enhancing and Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "Smart money says that is not a Tic Tac."

Nathan laughed, but Gibbs didn't find it funny. They needed to see the Chief.

/-/

Nathan put his pockets in his coat as they crossed the flight deck, and he watched Chief Reyes yelling as a jet landed.

"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!"

"Excuse me, Chief Reyes?" Nathan called.

"Yes," Reyes said, narrowing his eyes at them.

"We haven't been introduced," Gibbs said. "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS. This is Special Agent Wells. You already know Special Agent Burley."

Chief Reyes stood a bit straighter and said, "What can I do for you, Sir?"

"You can give me one of those capsules you gave Petty Officer Wilkes during Flight Ops."

"Sir?" Reyes said puzzled.

"We have it all on flight deck tape, Chief," Stan said.

"You can see a capsule from that camera up there?" he said, pointing up.

"We had it digitally enhanced," Gibbs said softly. "I can see the hairs standing up on the back of your neck."

"What do you think those are, Sir?" Reyes asked, giving them a pill.

"Meth, Chief," Stan said.

"Meth?" Reyes said, shaking his head, spitting mad. "That's ninety-eight percent caffeine. Available over the counter at any pharmacy in Norfolk. Coffee's not allowed on the deck, so I give it to my men to keep them going. I would never do anything to jeopardize these men, Sir. I love these men…and I would die for these men."

/-/

The whole team waited in Stan's office for the capsules to be tested. He pulled out the pouch, but he didn't start the test, and Nathan was obviously itching.

"Standard test pouches," Tony said with a grin. "Just like I used in Baltimore."

At this, Tony perked and his shoulders straightened. Gibbs held in a laugh and said, "Yeah, DiNozzo was a Baltimore cop before coming to us."

"Is that right?" Stan said, smiling. "How long?"

"Almost two years," Tony said.

"And before that?"

"He was in Philly," Nathan said, scratching his chin and staring at the test pouch, impatient.

"Eighteen months, right?" Kate said, smiling.

"There were extenuating circumstances," Tony said stiffly.

"And what was before Philly? I forgot. Pittsburgh?"

"Peoria."

"Right," Kate said with a grin.

"But the important thing is," Nathan said, more irritated, "he's at NCIS now."

"Oh, and you've been here for, um…refresh my memory…" Kate said, hinting.

"Two years," Tony snapped. "What did you do before NCIS, Burley?"

"Ah, just pushing papers around in Washington," Stan said.

"Well, I'm sure it wasn't so bad," Tony said.

Gibbs laughed and said, "How bad can being a Senator's Aide be?"

"It wasn't me," Stan said with a shrug.

"DiNozzo, the kit," Gibbs said when he noticed Nathan about turning colors.

"Please," Nathan snapped, and Gibbs grinned.

"Yeah," Tony said, opening it. "Simple. Place a small sample of the suspected substance inside the pouch," he said, pouring the capsule contents into the pouch. "Seal it. Break the ampoule inside the pouch which releases the test chemicals. If the clear liquid turns a color, we have drugs." He shook it lightly to speed the mixing, and they waited several moments, but the liquid stayed clear. "Not meth," he said, raising his eyebrows."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes at the pouch and said, "Well, that pouch might be clear, but my gut's still in living color. Alright, get a search authorization. Sweep Chief Petty Officer's rack." Stan nodded. "Wait until he's occupied with Flight Ops in the morning."

/-/

The following morning, Stan, Kate, Tony, and Nathan decided to go over the quarters while Gibbs kept an eye on Chief Reyes.

"There's nothing here," Stan said, frustrated.

"Nothing that's obvious, anyway," Kate said, narrowing her eyes.

Tony grinned and said, "It's time we turn off the lights and play in the dark."

They turned out the lights and used UV to check over all the surfaces, and even under some. After a bit of work, Tony said, "Anywhere Chief Petty Officer Reyes touches can leave residue."

"This could be something," Nathan said, with a bit of white powdery substance in the shelf of a locker.

"Could be toothpaste," Stan said, frowning.

"Could be meth," Tony said in a hard tone. "Bag it."

"Hold it," Kate said. "Tony?"

They scraped it together into a bag and went back to Stan's office to see what they had.

/-/

Gibbs narrowed his eyes as the test patch remained clear.

"No," Tony said, "it looks like the same Alert capsule we tested."

"You think we're barking up the wrong tree?" Kate asked.

Gibbs shook his head and said, "Actually, I was thinking just the opposite. Why have the contents of an Alert capsule loose on your locker shelf?"

Stan's eyebrows shot up and he said, "Unless you emptied it so you can fill lit up with something else."

Nathan frowned and said, "So, if he filled it with meth, why didn't we find any traces?"

"Because you can be sure Reyes is taking extra precautions with a substance that can put him away," Tony said grimly.

"Okay," Kate said slowly. "Then how do we link Reyes to the meth?"

Gibbs took a deep breath and said, "By going to the one guy from the original crew who still might be holding some."

He motioned for Nathan to follow him. They were going after Petty Officer Niles.

/-/

Nathan and Gibbs approached the Petty Officer Niles, working out on his punching bag, although when he heard someone approaching, he swirled around, horrified.

"Woah," Gibbs said, "a little jumpy today, Petty Officer."

"Nah," Niles said dismissively, "you know, I just get a little nervous when it gets close to duty time."

"Reyes works you hard on that flight deck."

"Yes, Sir. You've got to keep on top of it."

Nathan smiled a bit and said, "Well, that sounds like it's quite tiring. Exhausting, even."

"Nothing I can't handle, sir," Niles said firmly.

"Especially when you have yourself a little pick me up," Gibbs said, eyes narrowing. Nathan watched the proud disdain on Niles's face.

"Sir, I don't know how many times we gotta go over this, but I…"

He trailed away as Gibbs cut in, "This is the last time, I promise. My crew is tossing your rack as we speak."

"They're not going to find anything.

"Maybe that's because you have it on you."

"You want to search me?" Niles said. "Go ahead. But I'm telling you, the only pick-me-up I use is a cup of coffee before I go on duty and a couple of these when I'm on deck!"

Gibbs took one of the pills and said, "Mind if I hang onto these?"

"No, Sir!"

Nathan and Gibbs exchanged a glance, and they went back to Burley's office to test the capsules one last time.

/-/

This time, the pouch did not stay clear. Burley shook his head and said, "Meth disguised as caffeine capsules."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes as the packet and said, "I'm assuming you didn't find anything in Petty Officer Niles's rack."

"Clean as a whistle," Tony confirmed.

"Disgusting," Nathan said, clearly angry. "Those Petty Officers weren't lying. They really didn't know they were taking anything but caffeine, all along."

"How in the hell could a Chief feed his own guys speed?" Stan asked, horrified.

"Are we going to bring him in now?" Kate asked.

"Not yet," Gibbs said, considering the pouch. "All we have is a Petty Officer in possession who claims his highly-regarded superior gave it to him without his knowledge."

"Won't fly well with JAG," Stan agreed.

"We want to get him with the evidence in hand," Gibbs said, knowing it was only a matter of time before Niles started his withdrawals, and the Chief would have a choice to make.

/-/

Nathan, Stan, Tony, and Kate went to the office of Lieutenant Norski, the Urinalysis Coordinator. He looked up at them with surprise.

"We're not here for a deposit, Lieutenant," Nathan said, and Tony grinned. Tony closed the door behind them.

"More like a withdrawal, actually," Kate said.

Norski looked around at them, and then said slowly, "I'm not sure I know what you're getting at."

"Oh, I think you do, Lieutenant," Stan said. "Your service record indicates you and Chief Reyes have served on three different ships together."

"On each one," Kate said, "the Chief's crew had the distinction of maintaining the highest performance rating."

"Thanks, of course, to his capsules," Tony said, "and your help in covering up the urine tests."

Burley narrowed his eyes and said, "It's over, Lieutenant. Before you pee in your pants, why don't you show us where he keeps his stash."

/-/

Gibbs exhaled as Nathan joined him in the Hangar Bay. He hadn't thought he'd make it back from Urinalysis in time, but the canary apparently sang, and it was just in time for Chief Reyes to come looking for Niles.

"Why the hell aren't you on the flight deck, Niles?" Reyes demanded.

Niles didn't have to act nervous. Gibbs knew he was. He hated what he'd been told to do.

But he did it anyway, saying, "I don't know, Chief. I ain't feeling so hot right now."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Reyes snapped. "We've got aircraft coming in!"

"I'm beat, man. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"You've got to get it together, Petty Officer. You've got to suck it up!"

"I don't think I can, Chief."

Mildly reluctant, nervous, obviously worried about the NCIS presence on the ship, Reyes hesitated before he said, "Come here." Niles came closer, and Reyes gave him a capsule. "This should help you out."

"Just one, Chief?" Niles asked, and Reyes gave him another.

That was enough.

"Now get the hell on the deck," Reyes snapped.

Gibbs and Nathan rounded the corner and Niles looked at Reyes, nervous.

"That's okay, son," Reyes assured the younger man. "You followed orders. That's what a good sailor does. Go on, now."

The pills were dropped in the evidence bag, Reyes knowing the game was up.

"Thanks," Gibbs said, and Niles hurried off to do his job.

"These men," Reyes said, his voice hard, "spent ten months in the Gulf, combat conditions. Twelve hours a day, one hundred and ten degrees on the deck."

Gibbs nodded and said, "With you in their face, pumping them up with meth."

Reyes's nostrils flared.

"I gave my men something to help them do their jobs better, and it worked."

"I'd like to hear you tell that to the family of Petty Officer Wilkes," Nathan said softly.

Reyes sighed and narrowed his eyes, but then he said, "I'm sorry about what happened, but I'm not going to make excuses. We got our planes on the deck and out of harm's way faster than any other crew. Wilkes was a casualty of war, Agent Wells. A hero."

"Yes, he was, Chief," Gibbs agreed. "He was also a victim of a leader who betrayed his trust."

But the words did not seem to sink in on Reyes. Maybe someday, when he served his very long sentencing, what he'd done would finally hit him.

/-/

The following morning, goodbyes were said, and Nathan watched as Stan and Gibbs had words.

"I have to say, it was like déjà vu working with you again, boss," Stan said.

Gibbs grinned and asked, "Good déjà vu or bad?"

"Good," Stan said.

Then they both chorused, "And bad."

"You know, boss, in all seriousness, you know how much it means to me that—"

"Ah, hell, Stan," Gibbs said, "you're not gonna get all huggy on me?"

"I guess I'm not," Stan said.

Nathan came forward, holding out his hand, and he said, "Probably for the best. Bye, Stan."

"Bye," Stan said, shaking both sets of hands.

"See you, Stan," Kate said. "Thanks."

Gibbs and Kate walked off, but Tony frowned and said, "You know, in the two years I've worked for Gibbs, he's never shaken my hand once. Never."

Stan grinned and said, "I was in the office two years before he even looked me in the eye."

"Really?" Tony said, stunned.

"And three weeks before he called me by name. Four 'til he got it right. By then, I'd actually gotten used to Steve. He must really like you."

"Thanks," Tony said, and he took off.

Nathan raised his eyebrows and said, "Elaborating for his ego?"

"A little bit doesn't hurt," Stan said, winking. "And he does like him. Clear to anyone who knows Gibbs."

Nathan snorted. He shook his hand again, and followed them onto the COD.

"The CAT launch is like the wire landing, only in reverse," Gibbs was telling Kate as Nathan strapped himself in. "We go from zero to a hundred and forty knots in a second and a half."

"It's brutal," Nathan said with a chuckle.

"It's kind of like sex without all that work," Tony said with a shrug.

"Everything is like sex to you, Tony," Kate said, frowning.

"Cross your arms," Gibbs instructed, "chin to your chest. Lean forward as far as you can."

"And breathe normally," Kate said, trying to follow all the directions.

They launched, and Nathan couldn't see anybody but Gibbs.

"How are you doing, Kate?" Gibbs asked. "Kate? Wells, how's she doing?"

"Can't see her," Nathan said. "Tony?"

"She's smiling!" Tony said, and Nathan laughed.

 **A/N: So, here's more Nathan for you! Don't worry, Chloe's going to be in episodes, too. But their stories are very intertwined, and her job doesn't make sense in some of the places his does. Plus, Nathan has an inkling about attraction, where Chloe is a bit clueless.**

 **Review Prompt: How would you describe the relationship between Gibbs and Nathan?**

 **Q &A: Out of questions! Ask me more; ask me anything!**

 **Cheers,**

 **C**


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